Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  ‘Why talk about something you’d find out all too soon on your own?’ she sighed. ‘It’s not as if you could get down to the mine any earlier.’

  ‘That’s not the point!’ he muttered, incensed. ‘The point is I need to know things like this. You See all the time, you say. You should warn me. I can’t necessarily guess what to look for in the Reading.’

  ‘You can’t, that’s true, but it doesn’t occur to you not to ask at all,’ she said mildly. ‘Never once have you allowed the Sap to show you what it wills. I guarantee you’d See all you needed that way.’

  He was defeated by this line of reasoning, chewing on his frustration in silence as he clambered up a ladder on the far side of the pit. Although he was aware that the Oracle could read him transparently, he did not communicate his feelings aloud as he made for the huddle of sleeping huts. There were no confounded guards there, thank goodness.

  ‘You’re not really angry with me, are you?’ his teacher observed, after a moment.

  ‘No,’ he admitted through clenched teeth.

  ‘It’s true. What people do to each other is worse than hell.’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, brusque with her in his misery.

  He could hardly speak at all. He burned with outrage at the thought of Nightside and Zero, branded like kine, and Dawn forced to serve the abominable appetites of the mine-guards. He strode in hot silence through the slave quarters, squinting to see the faded numbers painted on the sides of the huts and keeping a wary eye out for any more overseers. He consigned them cordially to any hell that might exist.

  ‘Take heart,’ murmured the Oracle in answer to his unspoken turmoil. ‘I suspect this particular hell has a crack or two. Your coming here is a small thing, a hairline fracture. But even the smallest things can start an avalanche.’

  Hut number seven was a dilapidated shack standing at the far side of the group of buildings. Tymon tapped on the door; it swung open at his touch.

  ‘Dawn? Are you there?’ he called softly into the gloom.

  There was a faint scraping from within the hut, like the movement of grasses bending and sighing against each other. ‘I knew you would come, Lord.’

  Dawn’s voice was faint, its tone of fervent conviction immediately recognisable. As Tymon felt his way into the deeper gloom of the shack, past the threadbare pallets jammed together on the floor, he made out the pale face of the Saffid girl lying near the back wall. Dawn was stretched out on a blanket, her form pitifully thin. She tried to sit up as he arrived, but was unable to do more than raise her head.

  ‘Rest easy,’ he begged, kneeling down and pushing her gently back on the blanket. ‘Don’t move on my account. You need to save your strength.’

  For he could see as his vision adjusted to the darkness that her face was now covered in the telltale lesions, her body wasted away by the Saffids’ version of the Slow Death. Her eyes glinted with feverish joy.

  ‘You bring me strength, Lord,’ she told him.

  He dared not contradict her beliefs, with her laid out before him like this, in the final stages of her illness. He took her hand and held it in his own, no longer squeamish about the lesions that encrusted her skin. If he could have taken the mysterious sickness upon himself at that moment, curing her, he would have done so. It was with difficulty that he dredged up what he hoped would be the right words.

  ‘I’m going to contact the Focals again,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to ask them to send as many machines as they can from the Freehold. Even if we can’t get all the mineworkers out, we’ll still do something for the Saffid, I promise.’

  ‘I know you will,’ she said. ‘You will rescue them. You will get them out. I have faith.’ Neither of them mentioned the fact that for her, rescue came too late.

  ‘Tymon,’ murmured the Oracle in the recesses of his mind, ‘I would like to speak to Dawn, but I can’t use your body outside the trance. Would you mind giving her the message?’

  ‘Of course,’ he answered aloud, in surprise. ‘Dawn, I have to tell you that little Lai finally died after we left Cherk Harbour,’ he explained to the sick woman, whose eyes widened at the implications of such news. ‘Ama’s here with me, now, though it’s not a full Exchange. She has a message for you.’

  Dawn’s face lit up with joy. She tried to struggle up again before sinking down on her bed, her gaze burning into Tymon as he tried to understand the Oracle and speak simultaneously.

  ‘The time you have been waiting for so eagerly has arrived,’ he said, repeating after his teacher. ‘Your people will be free. There is a long road to travel before they reach redemption. The Sign will help you as any good person would, but do not expect him to do more for now. He has not yet passed the test.’ He frowned: the Oracle’s words seemed to both play along with Dawn’s obsession and undercut it. He was given no chance to object, however. ‘You will leave this place in a few days under his protection,’ he continued, as the phrases succeeded each other relentlessly in his head. ‘After that you will be free. He should be able to guide the Saffid to a safe haven, a place where they will live in peace until the Promised Time. Is that all?’

  In his confusion he had spoken his own question aloud at the end of her speech. ‘That’s all for now,’ the Oracle answered quietly. ‘You should leave her, Tymon. Let her rest, or she won’t last long enough to see the escape.’

  His teacher’s promises seemed to be enough for Dawn. A smile of beatitude had stretched over her bloodless lips, as if Tymon had just handed her the key to Paradise. When he bid her farewell until their next meeting and arose, she barely nodded to him. But her eyes remained fixed on him as he picked his way towards the door of the hut.

  Luckily, none of the mine-guards were to be seen outside. Tymon hastened away from the huts and across the shaft, filled with brooding anxiety for his friends as he mounted the ramp that wound up the sides of the crater. Even blanketed by a layer of cloud and leaves, the winter daylight when he reached the top was almost blinding.

  6

  Tymon could not help bemoaning the fact for a second time, on his way back to the mansion, that the Oracle had not told him about the Saffid. His teacher’s answer was more brusque on this occasion than it had been when he first made these objections.

  ‘You must learn to See for yourself,’ she warned him, as they walked along the perimeter road to the House. ‘I cannot always be your keeper. You must learn to rely on the Sap for what you need to know, and not only on me. There will be times when I cannot help you: there will be times when you must help me instead.’

  There was a severity in her tone that struck his conscience like a gong. She disappeared after that, much to his chagrin, and he wondered whether she was engaged in another of her mysterious struggles with the Envoy’s Masters. He could not even begin to imagine how those contests were played out. Did they take place in the Veil? How was his teacher able to defend herself against Beings of such power? Was she in serious danger when she spoke of needing his help, or was it merely her way of encouraging his independence? He had not questioned the Oracle on these subjects before, partly because other matters had preoccupied him, and partly out of a sense of pride and discretion. He had learned through experience that his teacher would only trust him with information when she considered him ready for it, refusing to answer a question she thought was inappropriate. Up till now, such behaviour had simply annoyed him. This time, however, he was troubled by her absence, sensing a danger there that had nothing to do with evasion.

  She did not revisit him all that afternoon. On his return to the House, he was set to work sorting through the Lord’s correspondence in the conservatory, while his employer stepped out for a stroll. Dayan required his secretary to file his letters away in a special cabinet equipped with alphabetised drawers, for he was as punctilious regarding his business transactions as he was about the feeding and grooming of his dogs. The task was deadly dull for Tymon, and would have been made much lighter by the Oracle’s return. But the hours passe
d and still she did not come.

  In her absence, Tymon felt dismally alone. Sitting on the floor of the conservatory and leafing through the sheets of serviceable bark-rag and smooth pulp paper, he fell to thinking of his vision again, of the figure on the dock at Hayman’s Point. Although he had been warned not to dwell on the subject, he had been unable to dismiss Samiha from his mind since his arrival in Chal. He speculated whether the glimpse of her had been some form of Sending, rather than a mere hallucination: a real, if brief, communication with her. He yearned secretly for it to happen to him again. His heart raced whenever the dismal winter weather was broken by a fine spell, and rays of light penetrated the leaf-forests; he stared at sunbeams, hoping against hope to see the shining figure. He never confided his obsessions to the Oracle, due in part to an obscure sense of shame. When she was with him, he was able to put the idea out of his mind, as she had advised. But when she left him to his own devices, as she had this afternoon, the image of Samiha returned to haunt him.

  He had classified about half a box of letters, reflecting gloomily on his lost love, when he came upon a missive bearing the seal of the New East Trading Company. He stared at the words scrawled near the top of the page, by the blot of broken wax. They were like a hook dragging him back to bleak reality. Even the thought of Samiha faded away. This New East Trading Company had been the one mentioned by the merchant, Yago, in Cherk Harbour, the company connected to the Reaper. This was the business arm of the infamous resettler fleet. Ultimately, he realised with a jolt, it was Lord Dayan and those like him who were responsible for what had happened to Laska. Tymon had not forgotten the betrayal of his old friend. He stood by the cabinet, blinking down in shock at the sheet of paper in his hands.

  He had been taken in by Lord Dayan’s façade of dilettantism. He had considered his employer to be a self-centred drone, who never changed the conditions in the mine simply because they profited him. But Dayan was one of those who created the conditions in the first place. The letter, Tymon read in mounting fury, was addressed to the Company’s honourable shareholders. It mentioned the need to transfer operation headquarters to Cherk Harbour, either due to ‘unfortunate events’ or ‘an unfortunate illness’ in the South Canopy — his grasp of Lantrian was not quite sufficient to tell the difference. Such steps were necessary, apparently, in order to ensure smooth business operations in the future, and a steady flow of ‘merchandise’. Tymon could have balled up the paper and stuffed it down his employer’s throat.

  ‘A Grafter does not seek revenge,’ said the Oracle, abruptly present in his mind again. She delivered her moral refrain with an edge of weariness, like the words of a song repeated once too often.

  ‘Are you alright, Ama?’ he murmured in the silence of the conservatory. ‘I was worried about you.’

  ‘The Masters harry me in their attempts to break out of the Veil — but yes, I am well enough,’ she answered. ‘I have not seen my charges so restless in a long while.’

  ‘Can’t we do anything to help you?’ he asked, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from the letter. ‘The Focals, I mean?’

  ‘So,’ she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice, ‘you’re beginning to identify yourself with them, aren’t you? That’s good. Actually, it’s a balm to my heart and the best thing you can do for me. Work with the Focals. Keep vigilant. Stay unified. And for heaven’s sake, forget this toad of a mine-owner. He isn’t worth your anger.’

  ‘It’s hard to forget what I’m doing here,’ protested Tymon. ‘I’m helping him fill his resettler ships.’

  ‘Ah, you’re doing a lot more than that, unfortunately,’ she replied. ‘Lord Dayan is involved in every piece of dirty business the South and Eastern Canopies have to offer. He traffics in slaves. He controls the trade in core. Lately, he has paid an Argosian priest to sell him the secret of blast-poison, and is busily turning himself into the greatest arms merchant in the Four Canopies. He deals with all whom Argos chooses to ignore. After the attack on Sheb, the seminary abandoned their relations with the Nurian rebels. Now Caro and his proxies have taken to buying their supplies from Dayan. The Lord sends them blast-poison in exchange for shipments of som.’

  ‘What?’ Tymon almost laughed aloud at the bizarre juxtaposition. ‘The Nurian rebels have ties with slavers? How does Caro justify that?’

  ‘He calls it “pragmatism”.’

  ‘Do Oren and the others know this?’

  ‘They know, because they are deeply concerned with the fate of the Freeholds, and the fate of the Freeholds is interwoven with that of the rebels. The two go hand in hand.’

  ‘So strange,’ mused Tymon. ‘Caro hated me so much. And now he’s willing to deal with Dayan.’

  ‘He hated you because you had nothing to offer him,’ observed the Oracle. ‘People like Caro have been around since the beginning of time and I daresay will be around till the end of it. They actually think they’re doing good, you know.’

  The way she spoke of passing eons so matter-of-factly, as if worlds were born and died in the blink of an eye, made Tymon remember the Born.

  ‘You said the Envoy’s Masters were your charges,’ he remarked curiously. He wanted at least a few more answers to his questions. ‘Why, Ama? They aren’t your responsibility, surely?’

  ‘But they are, Tymon. I am the gatekeeper. They are hammering at the gate. I am the lock. They are searching for the Key. So it has been for a great many years.’

  But he wanted a precise, not a poetic, response. ‘How many exactly?’ he asked, his pulse quickening.

  This was one of the points she had never clarified to his satisfaction. She had never told him how long she had carried out her responsibility as Oracle, inhabiting host after host in her capacity as guardian. Something told him that it was a considerable amount of time.

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Far too long. And you’re right about another thing: I don’t wish to talk about it. Tell me more about that letter in your hands. I believe it’s the important thing to focus on at the moment.’

  When he had recounted the gist of the letter, she gave a grunt of derision. ‘He knows, then,’ she sighed. ‘He has made arrangements.’

  ‘Who, Ama? The Envoy? He knows what?’

  ‘You’re a sharp one.’ She chuckled. ‘The Envoy knows his affairs will be better served if the Company works out of Cherk Harbour. He made provision for that evidently, before abandoning the Reaper. I wonder how the decision went down. I doubt people like Dayan were happy about it.’

  ‘I can’t believe I have to work for that devil,’ snorted Tymon. He gave the Company letter a disdainful flick of his thumb and forefinger. ‘For this pack of devils who bring misery to everyone —’

  ‘Beware of names,’ said the Oracle, interrupting. ‘They define us if we let them. You’re thinking of your employer as less than human, just as you were beginning to do with your fellow Argosians. It’s a dangerous habit.’

  ‘But Dayan is a devil!’ he objected. ‘Only a monster would do what he does —’

  ‘Tymon,’ she admonished. ‘This is essential for you to understand. No matter what Dayan does — no matter what he does to your friends, to poor people like Dawn and her fellow workers — it is essential that you recognise him as your own flesh and blood. There will be no end to this business, ever, if you can’t see that. One day, your sort will triumph over his sort, and he’ll be the one working in the mine instead of you. And so it will go, round and round, unless you stop the whole thing. Now!’

  Tymon said nothing. He had never heard his teacher speak so strongly: her usual equanimity, her dry detachment had vanished, and her voice was full of emotion. Even so, he still could not bring himself to say anything remotely positive about Dayan. So he kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Remember what you learned in Argos city,’ she resumed in a quieter tone. ‘The Tree contains all things. Happiness and sorrow. Dark and light. A Grafter accepts that and carries on. We cannot See every end.’

  For
get the quarrel between happiness and sorrow. The words of his vision returned unbidden to Tymon’s mind. He shivered. ‘So, what do I do then?’ he said. ‘Here I am, working for Lord Not-The-Devil, digging out shiny baubles from the heart of the world so that fat governors can wear them on their fingers. I hate it. Give me some hope that my time here will not only result in horror and misery.’

  ‘Don’t forget the governors’ wives and concubines, sitting at home in Lant city,’ replied the Oracle. ‘They’re generally the ones with an insatiable appetite for corewood. But there is hope, Tymon. You’re in a unique position to help your friends here. And I don’t just mean the Saffid, I mean the Focals. There are things they don’t See, things they rely on you to tell them. As I say, they are preoccupied with the Freeholds, and so other factors escape them. Allow the Sap to take you to places you cannot conceive of beforehand. Seek out new questions, instead of always wanting answers to the old ones.’

  He did not have occasion to reply. At that instant, voices echoed in the corridor outside the conservatory. Lord Dayan was addressing a visitor on his way back to the office. Tymon hastily shoved the Company letter into the appropriate slot in the cabinet. As he did so, his nerves were set jangling by a sound he had come to dread: the low, menacing growl of the Lord’s dogs.

  His first terror of the Tree-dogs had long since passed, and he no longer thought of their superficial resemblance to the Beast-that-was-Lace. He even pitied the brutes, for he saw that they had been inbred to the point of torture. Their breathing was laboured, their snouts too short and their mouths perpetually agape. But they still represented a serious threat to his safety. The animals had never taken a liking to him, their jittery temperaments upset by this newcomer in their closed world; their hackles rose whenever they saw him, as if they sensed his unspoken aversion to their master. He had not noticed them entering the room this time, their padded feet making no noise on the thick weave-mat, and rose slowly to his feet, turning around.