Tersias the Oracle

by G. P. Taylor

  Suddenly, a hand, long and white, grabbed the wood and quickly opened the door. “Hiding, boy?” the voice said from inside the room. “He’s here if you care to see him.” Blinded in a whirl of candlelight, Jonah felt a hand take him by the jacket and pull him through the doorway and into the room. He scrunched his eyes to shield them from the brightness as he tried to look for Maggot and take his first glimpse of Old Bunce’s private chamber.

  “I’m Griselda,” the voice said as Jonah covered his face with his hands and peered through his fingers to protect his sight from the blinding multitude of candles that lit the room with the heat of a summer’s day. “I’m a friend of Mister Bunce,” she said, and she gave a half smile. “We’ve arranged for Maggot to come and live with me whilst his leg mends. I live in the country. . . . You can come visiting if you have the mind.” Her voice suggested a knowledge of Jonah that he didn’t like. He thought it was as if everyone had been talking about him, burning his ears with their gossip. Prattling to each other in idle chitchat about how he had frozen with fear at the sight of the hound, unable or unwilling to help his friend.

  Jonah took his hands from his eyes. In the intense brightness he could make out the attractive face of the woman who stood before him, her powder-white skin shining in the glow from the fire and the mass of candles that burnt around the room. She was dressed like a man with her hair tied back and wrapped in a brigand’s black headband; she wore riding breeches and black country boots. As his eyes grew accustomed to the intense light, he stared around the dark-panelled room. To his right was a large stone fireplace with a black grate that burnt with the fragrance of pinewood. The room towered above him, and from the high ceiling were garlanded war flags and suits of silver armour. The walls were hung with old wreaths and ancient swords, bows and majestic war bands. This was the secret chamber Old Bunce had kept from the world. Jonah screwed up his eyes. From the ceiling hung the largest, brightest chandelier that Jonah had ever seen; each glass jewel glistened like a diamond with the flame of a thousand candles.

  Finally, there before him was Maggot, wrapped in a thick red blanket and snuggled before the fire, his head resting on a plump cushion with tasselled corners, his eyes closed and a contented grin smothered across his pale face.

  “I gave him some valerian to sleep and take away the pain. I have called my carriage to take him to Strumbelo. It is not far.” Griselda smiled, then looked at the bloodstain on his frock coat. “I have heard much about you from Mister Bunce, but he never mentioned that you had been injured.”

  “A lucky blow, by a coward who took me from behind, not a man to stare you in the face whilst he stabbed you,” Jonah said as she pulled on his sleeve, making him wince and his eyes fill with pained tears. The woman pulled back his shirt and unwrapped the folded cloth that had formed a sodden bandage around the wound, stained with the deepest green of nettle salve.

  “It doesn’t heal,” she said. She took a cloth and wiped the mess from the bloodied hole in his arm. “By what weapon were you run through?” Jonah saw a look of concern cross her face as she searched the wound. It was as if she looked for a sign, something that would tell her who had attacked him.

  “A dagger with cold steel and a liar for an owner,” Jonah said. “He buried it so deep in my arm that it had to be forced out.” The woman pressed a wad of cloth into the wound and a sudden, intense jolt of pain shot through his entire body.

  “This is no mortal wound and by no liar’s dagger,” Griselda said. “The hands that forged this blade were not of this world, and if I am right, then I know the owner of the knife blade too well.”

  Griselda looked up and saw a tear cross Jonah’s cheek. She smiled and wiped the bead of salt away with her fingers. “I will try to help you,” she said.

  Jonah felt calmed by her touch. His skin tingled with ecstasy, as if new life had been spread upon him like thick golden honey. “You have the knife—it is here with you and smeared with someone else’s blood.”

  “How did you know?” Jonah asked, suddenly ashamed to look in her eyes.

  “This is what it will do. You have carried on the curse and used it again. It will make you fight and try to kill in every circumstance.” Griselda held out her hand, nodding for Jonah to hand over the blade.

  “But it’s all I have to defend myself and I have to free Tara.” Jonah stepped back from her and into the doorway, hoping to find sanctuary away from the light of the room in the darkness of the inn.

  “So she is lost?”

  “Captured by the Solomites. They took her and a blind boy, an oracle called Tersias who says he can see the future. I say he’s listened too much to Magnus Malachi, the old fool magician. But he won’t listen to him anymore—Malachi was beaten to death in the alleyway. Saw it with my own eyes, beaten like horsemeat and squelched into the mud. That’s why I ran . . . I am not done with this life and don’t want to face the next—if there is one.”

  Jonah looked at the woman, surprised that she was listening. He wanted a chance to stand in his own defence, to put right all that had been said and justify himself and give good reason. “Don’t listen to what Bunce says,” he went on. “It was the dog, it took over my mind. I could’ve saved Maggot. . . . I was lost in my own head, a dream gripped me, blinded me . . .”

  He looked to the woman again, trying to meet her eyes, before allowing his gaze to fall sullenly to the floor. “Do you understand? Do you believe me? You have to believe me.” Jonah gulped back his tears. He felt ashamed. “If I knew the future, I would surely try to change it,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his dirt-stained hands. “I should have stayed and tried to save them, but I couldn’t. I had to run—it’s all I know. I’ve been chased so many times, it comes so easily. The first time I ever stood up to anyone was the night I was stabbed.” Jonah put his hands to his face and covered his eyes. “I’ve never told anyone before.”

  “Your secret is protected with me,” Griselda said kindly as she stepped towards him, taking a cotton bandage from a large black leather bag by her feet.

  “Are you a witch?” Jonah asked quietly. He pointed to Maggot. “He looks like you’ve tranced him. Saw it done once at the spring fayre. Looked just like that.”

  “Do I look like a witch?” The woman smiled at him as she tied off the bandage with her long fingers, taking a slither of red thread and wrapping it around his arm.

  Jonah looked at Griselda’s pretty features. “No,” he said. “It’s all them things in that bag, though—potions and stuff. Isn’t that what witches have?”

  “I don’t know because I’m not a witch. I’m a healer,” she said, looking at Jonah with eyes that could penetrate the soul. “I am someone for whom there are no boundaries between the worlds—dreaming and waking, night and day are the same to me. There are things that we know little about. In every tree there is a cure, every plant a remedy. That is the way in which the world was made. The apple brought man’s destruction and the vine has brought some redemption.” Griselda laughed as she saw a look of puzzlement cross his face. “Maggot is not tranced, he is in a curing sleep. I will take him home and he will stay for a while as a favour to Mister Bunce.” She looked around the room as if she was listening to another voice that Jonah couldn’t hear. “Before I go, I ask for one thing. . . . Show me the dagger.”

  “ ’Tis mine to keep?” he asked warily, as if she would steal it from him.

  “If you think it will do you good and you can control it and not let it control you . . .”

  “How can I be controlled by a piece of metal?” Jonah asked as he rummaged in his pocket and took hold of the warm handle of the knife.

  “There are things that you don’t understand. If I am right, then what you carry was forged many years ago on the Hill of Zion by the magician Hiram Abif. Long ago and in a faraway place it was the blade of the spear that pierced the side of a king at the Battle of the Skull. It was held by the Roman Longinus, who knew too late the nature of the one whom he pierced.
With the blood still fresh upon the metal it was taken and fashioned into a dagger. The blade is known as the Mastema. It has been handed down from generation to generation, and everyone who has held its grip has been seized by its spell.” Griselda looked at Jonah and lifted his face so that they met eye to eye, her bright blue stare piercing his. “Did the dagger travel alone or did you take an alabaster box from its possessor?”

  “No, there was nothing . . . not a thing. Just the knife.” Jonah pulled the knife from his pocket; it throbbed in his hand as if pulsating with life. “Is this what you speak about?” he asked, hoping she had been mistaken, that even one who spoke so wisely would be proved to be wrong.

  “Ah . . . it is the Mastema,” she said with no hint of surprise. “This is the knife and I know the keeper is Lord Malpas.”

  “His carriage had broken down by the old well in Conduit Fields,” Jonah said quickly. “I went to help and we got into an argument, he stabbed me in the arm and I ran away. The knife was stuck in my arm, it could’ve killed me—”

  “That is a frightening story, but you survived and are here to tell the tale so well. But what you have is very dangerous. It will seek its master and keep alive the curse.”

  “If you believe in curses, then that’s your superstition. I believe in what I see,” Jonah snapped back as he rolled the knife backwards and forwards in his hand.

  “Not believing in something doesn’t make it untrue. Sometimes it is only with knowledge that we can come to believe. Hiram Abif was a great man. In a secret place he forged the Mastema out of the finest metals. Every day he carried it with him, and as the morning star rose from the sea, he would point it to the heavens and speak to the sky. Then three men came who demanded Hiram to speak out the words so that they could listen. When he refused, they killed him with it. Since that time the Mastema has carried a curse. All who clutch it will be broken down and turned to dust.”

  “But you would take it from me and you know I took it from Malpas,” Jonah said.

  “I wouldn’t touch such a thing,” she said curtly, pushing out her hand. “As for Malpas, then his future is like burning coals in his own lap—as is yours. We in this world have a freedom to choose: good or bad, right or wrong. Each path is laid before us and yet we let our feet tread the path to perdition and our only thought is about the nicety of the shoes we wear for the journey.” Griselda laughed as she folded the two sides of her leather bag and shut it tightly. Jonah looked at her again; she seemed to be blurred and indistinct from the light that surrounded her, as if she were melting before his eyes, being absorbed into the brilliance of the candles. He remembered Tersias’s warning to take the knife back to the well.

  “Life is not as we think. You will keep the knife until it is time for you to do what is right. Upon your forehead is written your future, every path you should take and every lie and twist you make of it.” Griselda stopped and looked about the room. Her face changed, the smile fell from her lips and her deep blue eyes suddenly narrowed as if she looked into a different world. “Tread carefully, young Jonah, for you are being stalked and a wolf roams about, waiting to kill and destroy those with knowledge of the Alabaster. It’ll take more than a knife to save you from its treachery.” The words chilled Jonah.

  Suddenly, Griselda pushed him away from the door and dashed through the opening and into the darkness of the inn. “Quickly!” she shouted. “Someone’s out there . . .”

  Jonah turned to follow. A shadow flashed across the wall as Old Bunce clutched his throat with one hand and frantically waved the other back and forth.

  Griselda lashed out at the dark smog that appeared to be consuming Bunce. “Leave him!” she shouted, stepping back from the writhing shadow. She reached into the pocket of her frock coat and pulled from it a long silver chain fastened to a thin wooden vial. Quickly she twisted the cap and flicked the vial. In the darkness, Jonah saw several drops of glistening crystal fly through the air towards the black mass that hovered over the old man, who shuddered breathlessly on the floor.

  The door to the upper rooms slammed shut and heavy footsteps beat on the treads of the stairs that led up to the sleeping rooms. Jonah looked about the inn; there was no sign of the fop in his long black coat.

  “Upstairs! Run quickly, what he seeks must be there!” Griselda looked to Jonah as she spoke, her eyes telling him that she could read his thoughts. There was a blinding flash as the crystals hit the dark mist that choked Old Bunce and held him to the floor.

  Jonah ran to the stairway and tried to pull the door open. Then he stepped back and kicked out the panels, squeezed himself through the opening and into the stairway and undid the bolt that had held the door firmly shut.

  Above him he could hear the frantic searching of Tara’s room as her simple wooden bed was thrown across the floor and glass was smashed. Jonah scrambled up the stairs and turned into Tara’s room. There in the darkness he could see the image of a man outlined in the light of the moon.

  Jonah drew the dagger and held it before him. “Want some of this, do you?” he shouted at the man, swishing the dagger back and forth. It sparked blue and gold shards in the darkened room, cutting the air as it pulsated in his hand.

  The man stepped back, sensing the blade had some power over him, something that he knew he could not conquer. He stepped quickly towards the broken window, whose frame was torn from its hinges.

  “One more pace and I’ll run you through,” Jonah said as he slowly moved towards him.

  “I had you once before, boy,” the man said in a low growl. “Tore you from your bed as an infant and dragged you into the street. You are not to have such powerful possessions. Remember me, lest you forget. For one day I shall have you again, and this time . . .”

  It was then that Jonah saw the man’s eyes change to a bright glowing red that lit the darkened room, and his finger was transformed into a thick black claw. The man smiled a dark smile, his lips parting in a thick grimace to reveal his sharpened fangs.

  Jonah froze in terror as the image of the face churned his mind. He knew he had stared into the depths of those bloodied eyes long before. Dread reached into the pit of his stomach and he tried to scream a warning to Griselda, but his throat was gripped with terror.

  The man laughed as he reached for the window. “You have what I was sent for. I tried to prevent this years ago. Before this moon has waned, I will come back for you. Jonah Ketch, guttersnipe, I will eat of your flesh and not even that knife will stop me.”

  The creature leapt from the window and landed on all fours in the mud below, his laughter echoing around the empty streets as it changed into the baying of a hound. Griselda burst into the room and Jonah fell to his knees, as if his life had been stripped from him by the baying hound.

  “Lycaon,” Griselda said quietly, sniffing the air and lifting Jonah from the floor. “I should have known that old dog would be in this.” She looked out of the smashed window with its tattered wood and broken glass. “It would appear that he came for something that you told me you didn’t have.”

  Jonah bowed his head. He felt a wave of fitful remorse sweep through him as he picked the alabaster box from under the mattress. “I wanted to keep it for myself and Tara, there was something so beautiful about it.”

  “Beauty can be deceiving and even the tormentor will come clothed in light. Lycaon’s presence here meant the Alabaster was nearby. The dagger and the box are never separated for long.” Griselda paused and looked in the street. “Now you must do something for me. You must go to the place where you last saw Malachi, hide yourself and see if he has any visitors.”

  “But he’s dead,” Jonah argued, not wanting to leave the inn for fear of Lycaon.

  “Dead or alive, he has been the cause of much in this city and all this has fallen into our hands. There is a price on your head and the dagger will bring the dead looking for you.”

  XI

  TRISMAGISTUS

  In the Citadel, Campion slammed the cell door firmly s
hut on Tara. He stopped and listened to the sound of sobbing as he turned back to the steps. The mournful sniffles followed him higher as with each stride he distanced himself from the tears.

  Tara sat grasping the thin tallow candle that she had grabbed from the entrance to the cell before Campion brusquely pushed her through the narrow door. She wiped tears from her face with the sleeve of her coat, clumsily spilling the hot, burning wax onto the back of her hand.

  She could hear the grunting of a nearby voice.

  “You?” asked the voice hoarsely, coughing out the word. “Is it you?”

  Tara was silent.

  “Too . . . too bright for me to see,” the voice hooted like a gruff, old owl. It was a man’s voice. “There is only me left, everyone else has . . .” The man paused, sighed and took a deep breath. “They have gone. They are but grateful dead, and I a passenger of absolute tragedy.”

  Tara peered deeper into the cell that stretched out before her in the candlelight like some vast marble cavern. Then the sound of wrought-iron chains being dragged over the cold stones filled the chamber as the man hobbled back and forth.

  Tara held the candle as high as she could, and in the pale glimmer, she saw him. He looked up towards the light, covering his pitiful eyes with his hands to protect them from the brightness, his ragged clothes hanging like torn sails from his frail bones. She stared at his thick black beard that had grown two years in length from his bony chin. By his feet was a bed of torn cloth, swirled into a stained and bloodied nest.

  The man backed away from her. “I have nothing left but my mind and that you cannot steal.”

  “I want nothing,” Tara said calmly. “I, too, am a prisoner. We share a fate. I fear mine will be worse than yours.”

  The man laughed scornfully at her words. “My fate you will never share. My friends are gone. Solomon took us to make us his own, but we refused. We knew his secret, what he would do with London. The key was turned in the lock so long ago that my mind cannot remember when. I have lived in darkness, licked the water from the walls and for my food I . . .” The man looked around the cell, his feet shuffling away a pile of bones that lay cluttered about him. “Now I am sent an angel to share the light.”