Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  ‘What about Pallas, Masha and Bolas?’ Tymon enquired anxiously. ‘Could you find out what’s become of them for me? Read them? The Oracle advised me not to try on my own.’

  ‘It’s difficult to access people living within the Envoy’s sphere of influence,’ answered Noni. ‘We could and will try to find your two Argosian friends. But I’m afraid we’ve already looked for Pallas, without success. We’re sorry, Tymon: he’s not in the Tree of Being. We think the priests killed him.’

  ‘No!’ Tymon cried in horror. ‘That can’t be. The Oracle said we’d meet again!’

  ‘Maybe she meant in the next life.’

  ‘No,’ he muttered again, miserable. ‘I was sure she meant this one …’

  ‘Syon,’ Ara reminded him softly. ‘This is war with Envoy. We all lose much. Not even Oracle can save all. Mata and myself lost all family, long ago.’ His twin nodded, sombre. ‘We must be strong.’

  ‘Eblas has new powers,’ said Oren. ‘Or else old ones have awoken. Ama is right: our enemy has become strong. Never have we been so blind during Reading. All Argos is beneath his cloud.’

  ‘Take heart,’ Noni told Tymon, in an attempt to comfort him. ‘Wherever Pallas is now, our enemies can do no more to him. We should focus on the people we can help. Your part in all this is to stay alive until we reach you. Don’t rake yourself over coals for the ones you weren’t able to save.’

  Tymon left the conversation with his worries reawakened rather than set to rest, perturbed by the fact that the Oracle had said no word to him about Pallas. Indeed, she had told him that ‘what was broken shall be mended’, allowing him to think he would see his friend again. She knew very well he did not seek those meetings in the ‘world hereafter’: why had she not mentioned the danger?

  ‘Because I didn’t know for sure what had happened,’ she answered, responding to his unspoken thoughts as soon as his eyes blinked open in the shadowy kitchen alcove. ‘Because the others don’t know either, not really. They’re just guessing. Pallas has disappeared. It could mean he’s dead, or it could mean something else.’

  ‘Like what?’ he muttered aloud in the darkness. ‘Trust me, Ama. Tell me these sorts of things. I need to know.’

  ‘Very well,’ sighed the Oracle. ‘A disappearance in the Tree of Being can have different causes. Most obviously there is the death of the individual. The branch is gone and the Sap no longer flows there. But other factors can cause a temporary disappearance. The Sap can be stymied, or diverted away from an area, clouding the vision of the Focals. With regards to Pallas, we can only wait and see.’

  She paused, then continued almost to herself: ‘Sometimes, I disappear. But I’m not gone, not really. There will always be an Oracle.’

  Tymon was torn between anxiety and annoyance. Was she referring to the possibility of another attack? Why did she not simply trust him with the facts? Her cool rationalisations left him floundering. ‘It seems lately that whenever I ask the Sap something, I’m given the same answer,’ he grumbled. ‘Wait.’

  ‘Maybe the message is being repeated because you refuse to listen to it,’ said the Oracle. ‘In any case we have our orders, soldier. You are to live. You are to survive. You are to get out of here in one piece, so we can return to Farhang and tackle the Envoy properly. All together.’

  Tymon was grateful to her for that last qualifier, at least. But there still remained a long and frustrating period before the air-chariot would come for them. He would be obliged to endure life as a House slave — with the knowledge that poor Zero was enduring the mine — for another fortnight, the time it would take for a new air-chariot to be completed and sent from Farhang to Lantria. The existing ones were in constant use and could not be spared. Indeed, it was fortunate that he had chosen that first evening to speak to the Focals, for he found in the days that followed that he did not have much time to consecrate to the Grafting. He was kept occupied by Lord Dayan for most of the day, and allowed to return to his alcove only late at night, when he was thoroughly exhausted.

  His talents as a half-deaf scribe were quickly recognised and exploited by the Lord, who had him present at every one of his business meetings. Dayan conducted his office work in the conservatory, a room fronted by translucent panels of sap and bathed from morning to evening in a soft orange glow. There, the proprietor of the mine would converse with a stream of clients in his leisurely, nasal drawl, his blue gaze wandering vaguely about the room and his long body draped over his chair, as if the last thing on his mind were business. He never wore the ubiquitous Lantrian collars, apparently feeling no need to reinforce his status by that means. The two Tree-dogs lay stretched out beneath his desk, their menacing glare fixed either on Tymon or on the nervous visitors perched on the Lord’s opulent divans.

  A languid character with the inborn elegance of his set, Dayan hid a remorseless intelligence behind his front of boredom. As far as Tymon could tell, he always secured the better end of any deal. His clients held him in awe, paying their obsequious respects to him before negotiating over the price of hardwood. The war with Argos did not appear to affect business dealings between the two countries at all; several of the merchants who visited Dayan were of Argosian origin, though they took care to arrive in Chal by way of the Eastern Domains. They often bemoaned the hostilities as being bad for business, before settling down to haggle over the hardwood that would be used to build their nations’ respective battle fleets. It was shocking to Tymon, despite his own distaste for the Saint’s warmongering, to see how little the very rich of either canopy exhibited in the way of patriotism.

  He soon found that the importance of a visitor could be gauged by where the Lord asked him to sit, and by extension how much of the conversation Tymon was allowed to hear. If Dayan wished his secretary to take notes during the meeting, he would be invited to occupy a stool on the left of the desk. If it were expedient that a scribe be seen to be present but actually oblivious to the exchange, the Lord would place him to the right, with his good ear turned uselessly to the wall. Sometimes, the merchants began to haggle over the price of corewood; on these occasions, Tymon was invariably transferred to his deaf post. The conversation between the Lord and his guest would descend into an echoing murmur as the young man crouched on his stool, his sheaf of bark-paper idle on his knees and his heart as heavy as one of the beams cut from Dayan’s mine.

  For despite the Oracle’s predictions, despite all of Oren’s staunch promises, he felt that his time was ultimately wasted at the House. His entire motivation for enduring the Lord and his cronies was in order to help Zero, but as time went on, he saw no means of doing so. Days passed before he was even able to visit his friend, as the regiments of workers laboured, ate and slept in the depths of the shaft, far from the mansion. Finally, on the fifth day after his arrival in Chal, he was accorded the task of delivering a set of scrolls to the chief overseer in the mine, a man named Gul. It was just the excuse he had been waiting for, a chance to at least ascertain Zero’s living conditions for himself, even if he could do nothing immediately to help his friend.

  It was late morning when Tymon set off down the ramp into the crater. The journey took longer than he had expected. He walked for at least half an hour, descending ever deeper into the hollow branch; the rough planks of the ramp were plunged in shadow long before he reached the bottom. At last, he discerned the bobbing points of the workers’ torches in the dark heart of the crater, stars in that interior night. A faint sound of hammering rose up from the depths, growing louder as he reached the end of the ramp and struck out across a circular arena of chipped and gouged wood. He stumbled on as best he could in the gloomy twilight of the mine, following the faraway twinkling light of the torches. The hacking sound became a ceaseless thudding, reminiscent of Galliano’s first steam-contraption built in Argos city. It was a sound, Tymon thought, that should only be made by a machine.

  His first sight of the mine proper was of a group of makeshift huts, quarters for the Hordannan slaves. They
appeared to be deserted: the Nurians had already climbed into the deeper pit at the centre of the shaft, to begin their work. It was from this lower level that the thudding came. Tymon approached the pit and peered over the edge. The torches he had glimpsed from above had been set about the perimeter of the cavity, as well as in orderly rows across its floor. Figures bent and straightened in the flickering light — bent and straightened without cease, bringing their axes down in unison, their silhouettes black against the glow of the torches. They worked in gangs of twelve chained together at the ankle, hacking out sections of hardwood into long beams. Their rhythm never changed or faltered. If an individual member of a gang paused to catch his breath, a burlier silhouette stepped up from the sidelines and cracked a whip over his back. Once, perhaps twice the cruel thong came down, until the weary worker resumed his task.

  Tymon shuddered at the memory of pain, his shoulders tightening instinctively. He had no choice but to shove his scrolls under his arm and descend one of the long ladders leaning against the sides of the hole, making his way towards the nearest overseer. He scanned the faces of the Nurians he passed, wincing at each overheard crack of the whips; the mineworkers were all gaunt, defeated creatures, never once meeting his gaze. He could not see Zero among them.

  The burly overseer, for his part, gave Tymon a long and level stare when he was asked for the whereabouts of his chief, directing the young Argosian to the other side of the pit. Tymon assumed that his accent had given him away as a foreigner and hurried off, babbling his thanks before he could be questioned further. Not one of the workers looked up as he passed the heaving rows of backs. Halfway across the mine-floor he had to bite hard on his lip in order to avoid crying out with joy, for he had caught sight of Zero’s familiar ginger-cropped head, the last in line in one of the gangs. The Marak lad was stripped to the waist, his body sweating in the gloom as he lifted the heavy axe and brought it down again. He wore no mere tablet about his neck to indicate his bond to Lord Dayan: instead, Tymon noticed with a stab of outrage, a freshly made brand marked the youth’s right arm, similar to those used on Argosian herd-beasts. It was a florid ‘H’ like the one on the mansion gate, followed by the number five hundred and twenty-three, the burn still bright red and weeping as it healed. Zero’s face was set in an expression of placid endurance.

  Mindful of the overseers’ whips, Tymon waited until the guard standing closest to them had turned his back before approaching his friend. As he sidled closer, trying to appear nonchalant, he was greeted by a soft whoop of triumph from Zero. The Nurian boy let his axe drop and crouched on the floor of the pit, pulling Tymon down beside him. The workers may not have been quite as defeated as Tymon had feared, for the other gang-members never stopped or glanced in their direction, but continued to strike the beam in silent solidarity, providing cover for their conversation.

  ‘Thank the Tree you’re alive,’ were the first words uttered by Zero.

  ‘Me?’ Tymon replied, almost falling over in his surprise. ‘I’m fine! It’s you I’m concerned about. This place — what they’ve done to you —’ he winced as his gaze fell on the weeping brand-wound on his friend’s arm — ‘they’re worse than devils in Hell. Do they feed you properly at least?’

  Zero gave an answering grimace and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I’ll find a way to get you better stuff,’ Tymon assured him. ‘There’s no shortage of victuals at the House.’ He dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. ‘You’ve only got to stick it out for another week and a bit, Zero. My friends are coming for us. When do these chains come off? Do you go free at night?’

  He examined the hardwood ring about the lad’s ankle. It was smooth with years of use, but the chafing had already left a sore mark on his skin. The workers’ fetters were as tough as the beams they painstakingly shaped. Zero’s ring was the only one in his gang that possessed a lock. The other six were connected to it with a long thin rod, making movement away from the group impossible.

  ‘The chains come off, but then we’re shut up in the huts by these good people,’ said Zero. ‘Better still, there are guards everywhere. You can’t get near the ramp. These friends of yours — do they bring ships?’

  ‘Flying machines small and fast enough to come right down here and scoop you up. We just have to get you out of that hut.’

  ‘I’ll talk to the others. They’ll come up with a way.’ The Marak boy gave a conspiratorial wink. ‘I hope your friends have enough machines. There are lots of decent, evil people down here who need our help.’

  Tymon felt a twinge of compunction through his amusement; Zero’s topsy-turvy ideas, as well as his generosity of spirit, were still intact, despite all that he had suffered. But the remark also caused Tymon to wilt with shame, for he had not even thought of freeing the other mineworkers.

  ‘The air-chariot’s only for us,’ he said ruefully. ‘The Freeholders can only send one — I’m sorry, that’s all they can spare. We have to sort out a time, at night, when you can get away —’

  Zero shook his head in the gloom of the pit. ‘No, no!’ he interrupted. ‘We can’t leave these people behind.’

  ‘We have no choice,’ mumbled Tymon.

  Zero was asking him to perform an impossible task, he thought: there was no way to free the hundreds of mineworkers. He began to feel heavy and hopeless again, as he glanced up at the man standing closest to them. The Nurian was a skeleton of a creature, pounding faithfully away at the beam as they talked. Tymon wondered how much of their conversation he could hear.

  ‘We do have a choice, Lord,’ protested Zero. ‘They’ve been expecting you. Don’t disappoint them.’

  ‘Expecting me? But you couldn’t have known …’ Tymon frowned. ‘Why are you calling me “Lord”?’ he asked, assailed by a swift suspicion.

  Zero wordlessly pointed out three members of a neighbouring work-gang. They were younger than many of the other slaves, Tymon saw. They had spotted him, and were glancing over their shoulders as they worked, their hollow faces burning with hope. Then he noticed the excessively pale tint of their skin, and the whitish colour of their hair under a layer of red wood-dust. The Saffid! He did not remember these particular souls from the slum in Cherk Harbour, but would have recognised their trademark fervour anywhere.

  ‘The Tree help us,’ he breathed, both glad to see members of the tribe alive and paradoxically struck with terror at the added responsibility. ‘Tell me. Is there a woman named Dawn here?’

  Zero nodded. ‘They kept her for the guards to begin with, but she’s too sick to do that work now. She told me all about you. You’re the return of Saint Loa, saviour of Nur. Why didn’t you say so before?’

  ‘The guards?’ A faint groan escaped Tymon’s lips. ‘How many of the Saffid are in the mine, Zero?’

  ‘The older ones like Jan are gone, except Dawn. Nightside told me about twenty are left, spread out in different regiments.’

  ‘Nightside, too?’ muttered Tymon. ‘Where’s Dawn? Is she in one of the huts?’

  ‘Number seven. Back the way you came, Lord.’

  ‘Please, Zero, don’t call me “Lord”.’ Tymon glanced over his shoulder, towards the shacks at the edge of the pit. ‘I’m not what the Saffid think I am, though I wish I were. Then at least I could help …’

  He realised at that moment, with a lurch of panic, that the overseer had become aware of their exchange and was striding towards them, his face a storm cloud. There was no time to explain Dawn’s fixations to Zero.

  ‘Guard’s coming,’ he warned, jumping to his feet. ‘I’ll try to sort something out for the Saffid. But I can’t make any promises, Zero.’

  The Nurian boy scrambled up after him, and applied his axe to the beam as quickly as he could. But the overseer was already upon them.

  ‘What d’you think you’re doing, talking to the workers, House-scum?’ he boomed to Tymon. ‘D’you want a lick of this, too?’

  He raised his whip, laying two brutal strokes into Zero’s back. The la
d gasped with pain but carried on working. For Tymon, witnessing his friend’s suffering was worse than any punishment the guard might have inflicted on him. His body went cold, then hot, the scars on his back aching with sympathetic pain. The overseer was a slave himself, of course, his old burns visible on his sinewy arm.

  ‘It wasn’t his fault,’ said Tymon, glaring at him. ‘I was just asking him how to find the chief.’

  ‘Well, find this,’ jeered the other. He shook the end of the whip under Tymon’s nose. ‘We don’t talk to the help, my uppity little House friend. Lucky for you the Lord’s a softy, or I’d tattoo my number on your high-and-mighty rump. Chief’s over on the south side. Move, Sir Five-Two-Two!’

  The last command was accompanied by a kick aimed at his back. Tymon scurried away, hot-faced, his scrolls jammed under one arm. When his delivery to the chief was accomplished, he made his way back across the pit, taking care to walk on the opposite end to Zero’s overseer. On its southern side, the work-pit stretched all the way to the crater wall, and Tymon passed several tunnel-mouths leading down to a deeper level of the mine. He did not tarry, his eye trained warily on the guards posted at intervals around the workers. He was seething with suppressed rage.

  ‘You said nothing about this, either,’ he accused the Oracle, when he was out of earshot of the overseers. ‘Pallas I can understand — maybe. But you should have mentioned the Saffid.’