“Well, that's an appalling thing, if it's true,” a villager said – Malledd recognized him as Nedduel, one of the wealthier farmers in the vicinity. “How are we supposed to manage our affairs without oracles?”
The other traveler laughed and jabbed his companion's shoulder. “Didn't I tell you they'd say that?” he said. He, too, had that odd, lilting accent.
“Yes, you did,” the first agreed. He turned to Nedduel. “According to the oracles, my friend, that is exactly why the gods have put an end to oracles.”
Nedduel frowned angrily, his face reddening to match the cloth he wore around his neck.
“I don't understand,” said a woman's voice from a shadowy corner, and Malledd realized that it was his own eldest sister, Vlaia, who had spoken. He hadn't known she was there.
“What my friend means,” said the second traveler, “is that the gods allegedly feel the time has come for the people of the Domdur Empire to stand on our own feet and make our own destiny, without the direct intervention of our gods. The priest who told us the news took pains to explain that this doesn't mean that the gods have abandoned us – quite the contrary, he said. He compared it to teaching a child – a time comes when you must stop telling the child what to do every step of the way, and let him make his own mistakes. So it is with the gods and their child, which is to say, the Empire – after a thousand years in which the oracles guided us, we have grown enough that the time has come to let us make our own mistakes and find our own solutions.”
“And if you give a child answers too easily,” the first traveler broke in, “the child will come to depend upon them too much, and will never amount to anything on his own. It's because we've come to depend on the oracles – like our friend here in the red neckerchief – that the gods will no longer provide answers to our questions.”
“That's all very well for the Empress and all those courtiers in Seidabar,” Nedduel said, jabbing an angry finger at the air, “but for a plain farmer there are questions no one but the gods can answer. Who but the gods can predict the weather, and tell us when to plant, or what to do to save our crops from hail, or blight?”
“You'll just have to take your chances, I suppose,” said the second traveler, glancing smiling at his companion.
“The gods would let us starve?” Nedduel demanded.
The traveler shrugged, turning serious. “Hardly. They'll still send the rains and still fire the sun, and the earth will still be as fertile as Vedal wishes it to be – isn't that enough?”
“No!” Nedduel insisted.
“We're not children, Nedduel,” someone else said. “We'll get by.”
“But it can't be true,” Nedduel insisted. “Why would the gods desert us?” He turned away from the strangers to confront his fellow villagers. “I say it's a lie – either these two are teasing us with their stories, or the priests are lying for some purpose of their own.”
“Why would the priests lie?”
Two or three angry voices began speaking at once, and the noise level in the room rose abruptly. Malledd decided maybe he didn't want to be in here with the adults after all, and ducked back out the door.
The fresh air felt good; he hadn't consciously noticed the stuffy air and smell of old wood and stale wine in the inn, but now that he was outside again he noticed their absence.
Before going anywhere he paused to study the travelers' horses – his father wouldn't mind if Malledd came home with a couple of paying customers, and besides, Malledd liked horses.
The harness all looked sound and new enough, but even so, the animals might need new shoes. Malledd didn't have the nerve to lift a hoof and see, but he watched the two beasts carefully for any sign of sore feet. One of them might lift a foot just on a whim, or to chase away a bothersome insect.
As he looked, he could still hear men shouting in the tavern, and he thought over what had been said.
The gods would no longer speak through their oracles? Is that what the travelers had said?
He glanced up at the sky. The sun was high overhead, and the sky was blue streaked with white cloud, but Malledd thought he could see the faint crescents of three or four of the larger moons.
None were particularly near the sun, which was bright and hot – Ba'el had only recently yielded his turn powering the sun, and Vedal, who currently stoked the fires, was very nearly as powerful.
Malledd's mother had told him that when they weren't fueling the sun or doing their work here and there in the world below, the gods lived on the moons – each of the Hundred Moons belonged to one particular god or goddess. The priests, she said, knew the names of all the gods and all the moons, and which god lived on which moon; they had scholars called astrologers who studied the movements of the moons to learn more about the gods. She had pointed out and named the largest moons for him – Ba'el, the red one, largest of all, where the god of war lived; Sheshar, the blue one, home to the sea goddess; greenish-gold Vedal, the earth-mother's domain; and so on. She knew a score of them, at least – but not all of them, of course.
Once when Malledd was little, he had asked whether the stars belonged to little gods, and his mother had laughed and said that was probably exactly right, but she didn't know. He still wondered about that.
Malledd had liked the idea that the gods were up there, watching over everyone, running the world for the benefit of the Domdur Empire. He had imagined them leaning over the edges of the moons, chattering amongst themselves about all the silly things people did down here in the world, sending storms and lightning to punish the wicked, steering rain clouds where the farmers needed them, and so on.
And when someone's prayers asked a question that the gods thought was important, the gods would send a message down to one of the temple oracles with the answer – whichever god's concern it was, that god would hear the question from up on his moon, and would tell his oracle what to say. If no particular god was invoked, then Samardas, god of wisdom, busybody of the heavens and speaker to the most oracles, would handle it. If no questions were asked but the gods wanted something done, they told the oracles, and the oracles let everyone know what the gods had said. It had all been very comforting.
But now, according to the travelers, the gods weren't going to send any more messages, or tell the oracles anything.
That wasn't comforting.
Were those moons a little higher than before, a little farther away? Were the gods getting bored with the world? Malledd wondered – might they all just sail away someday, sail the moons off to somewhere else?
Was there anywhere else for them to sail to?
Were the stars perhaps moons that were not smaller, but farther away, moons that were homes to gods who had gotten bored and left long ago? Perhaps they were the homes of the gods of the lands the Domdur had conquered, in the long-ago times when the world was divided and the different peoples fought one another instead of living in harmony under the Empire's rule. Perhaps those gods had fled. Perhaps their departure was what had allowed the Empire to defeat the people who had worshipped them.
Or perhaps he was just making up stories. His father had sometimes chastised Malledd for letting his imagination run away with him, and here he was doing it again.
But what did it mean, if the oracles had fallen silent? How would anyone know what the gods wanted done?
And would people still do what the gods wanted, if the gods didn't tell them to?
Just then one of the horses snorted and stamped a hoof, and Malledd looked down in time to see a good new shoe – the traveler who rode that particular animal must have had her shod just before he started his journey. There was no work to be had for his father here.
Malledd hesitated, unsure what to do next, but before he could reach a decision the door of the tavern swung wide and the two travelers stepped out.
Malledd decided he didn't want to bother them. He turned and headed across the square and down the lane, past the graveyard to the forge, eager to tell his parents the news, that t
hese travelers said the oracles would no longer answer questions.
Three of his sisters were playing a game of tag around the circumference of the moat, dodging and laughing on the grassy brink, braids and skirts flying. One misplaced foot might send them tumbling into the malodorous muck at the bottom of the ditch, but none of them seemed to care.
“Ho, Malledd!” Vorda called, pausing in her wild pursuit of Deleva. “Father let you out?”
Deleva turned and sneered at her brother. “Well, really, Vorda,” she said, “a mere smith wouldn't dare try to order around the favorite of the gods!”
Deyonis giggled. She was twelve, closest to Malledd's own age; Vorda was fourteen, Deleva fifteen.
Malledd didn't bother to answer Deleva's jibe, or ask why the girls weren't helping their mother; he hurried on between the two ends of the moat, and on into the forge.
Hmar was working the bellows, getting the fire hot, when Malledd burst in. Hmar looked up through air that rippled with heat.
“Father!” Malledd called, “there were travelers at the inn, and they said that the oracles are no longer going to speak to us!”
Hmar grunted. “I never spoke to an oracle in my life,” he said, heaving on the bellows cord.
“I mean, they aren't going to talk to anybody,” Malledd explained. “The gods have decided not to use them to help people any more.”
“Probably just some silly trick of the priests',” Hmar replied, pumping the bellows again and looking at the glow of the coals. He obviously wasn't interested.
Disappointed, Malledd turned away.
Then, as he stepped back out of the smithy, he brightened again. He could still tell his mother; she cared about the gods, even if his father didn't.
Then he noticed Vorda and Deyonis standing one on either side of the door, giggling. Deleva was already running toward the house, and Malledd realized that she'd overheard his news and was running to tell their mother first.
He couldn't outrun her; not only did she have a head start, but at fifteen she had her full height, almost four inches taller than he was, and it was all in her legs. And that was assuming Vorda and Deyonis didn't trip him up.
Well, he could at least confirm the story, and maybe think of some details Deleva wouldn't know. He sighed, and started walking.
Vorda and Deyonis promptly jumped him from behind and knocked him to the ground; he tasted dirt, and a blade of grass went up his nose, tickling him horribly. He had been caught completely off-guard, the wind knocked out of him by the fall, and he was unable to resist as Vorda rolled him into the firebreak ditch.
He tumbled in face-up, and landed with a splash in the stinking mud at the bottom. He lay there for a second or two, utterly astonished.
Then he sat up, dripping and covered with mud, and gazed up at his sisters.
“What did you do that for?” he asked.
“Deleva told us to,” Deyonis said proudly.
Malledd blinked up at her, and brushed a muddy forelock away from his eyes. “Do you do everything she asks you?”
“No,” Vorda said, “but you deserved it.”
“Why?” Malledd wailed. “What did I do?”
Vorda shrugged.
“You wanted to tell Father and Mother before you told us,” Deyonis said.
Malledd looked down at his soaked, mud-covered shirt and breeches, and fought back tears. He had deserved this?
There wasn't any point in arguing. His sisters hated him – three of them, anyway. The oldest two just ignored him, for the most part, when Seguna wasn't trying to scare him to death with her stories about monsters and black magic.
Deleva was the worst, but all the younger three hated him. They always had, for as long as he could remember – but he didn't know why.
He'd never really thought much about it before; he'd just accepted it as the way things were, that any time he tried to do any least little thing to draw attention to himself his sisters would gang up on him and ruin it. He'd just accepted it.
But there had to be a reason, didn't there? They wouldn't just throw him in the ditch without a reason, not when their parents had ordered them all to stay out of it.
If he argued about it they'd just go on teasing and harassing him, and he was determined not to give them the satisfaction this time. Without another word, he got up out of the muck and clambered carefully out of the ditch, on the outside, away from Vorda and Deyonis.
Deyonis promptly jumped across the moat, landing a yard away from him; Vorda went around by the gap.
Malledd ignored them. He simply walked homeward without so much as glancing at his sisters. He could hear them whispering to each other, debating whether to follow him, but he didn't say a word. He forced himself to walk; his mouth trembled with the effort of not running, not crying.
Halfway to the house the girls stopped and watched as he marched soggily up to the door. He tried the latch – he intended to go inside and get himself into clean, dry clothes before his parents saw him like this.
The door wouldn't budge. Someone had locked it.
That meant he couldn't get inside unseen unless he climbed through a window, and that would leave a big muddy stain on the wall and sill – assuming he found an open window. Most of them were shuttered today, to keep the house cool.
He stood for a moment, fighting the temptation to break down in tears and yelling, collecting himself. If he had to let his mother see him after all, well then, he would. With an unsteady sigh he trudged around to the kitchen yard.
His mother wasn't there.
He frowned and looked around, unsure whether that was good or bad. He might yet manage to change his clothes undetected – but where was she? He didn't like to admit that he wanted his mother to comfort him, but he couldn't help feeling a bit abandoned. He stepped up to the back door, lifted the latch, and pushed.
The door didn't move.
That was ridiculous. His parents never locked both doors. He wasn't even sure the back door had a lock.
He pushed again, and thought he felt the door yield slightly, then push back into place. He put his ear to the wood, and thought he heard a half-smothered giggle from the other side.
Then he knew what was happening. Deleva was holding the door closed. His soggy misery faded, replaced by anger.
“Deleva, let me in!” he called.
She didn't answer, but he was sure she was there.
Malledd fought down his anger and tried to consider the situation logically, the way his father always said he should. Deleva knew he was out here, dripping wet and covered in mud – she'd arranged it. Their mother, though – where was she?
She must be inside the house, Malledd decided. Deleva would have talked to her in the house. But Deleva wouldn't dare bar the door like this if their mother was in sight, so she wasn't in the back room...
Malledd went to a bedroom window and knocked on the shutter. “Mother?” he called.
“Malledd?” The shutter rattled, then swung open, and his mother's face appeared in the window.
“Deleva won't let me in,” he said, “and I need to get cleaned up.” He gestured at his clothes.
“Oh, by all the gods,” his mother muttered. She turned away from the window. “Deleva!” she called angrily.
A moment later Malledd was inside, stripping his clothes off while his mother warmed a bucket of clean water on the stove for a sponge bath. Only the two of them were there; Deleva had been banished from the house for the remainder of the day.
Malledd hadn't explained how he had gotten muddy; he didn't want to make his sisters even angrier at him. He knew his parents could guess, though. He sighed bitterly as he climbed into the tin tub.
Chapter Two
That night, when Hmar returned home from the forge, each of the three guilty sisters got a swat from his cane; Deleva, as the ringleader, got three more. Seguna and Vlaia watched, clearly enjoying the superiority of their own innocence in this particular misbehavior.
Malledd di
d not look; he kept his eyes on his mother as she set out the supper dishes. He wasn't sure whether any of the blame for the prank would fall on him or not, nor whether he deserved any of it, and in any case he took no pleasure in his sisters' suffering.
When Hmar was done with his daughters he turned away, disgusted, leaving the children to their own devices; Malledd was not addressed.
At least, not by his father. Deleva, gently rubbing her injured backside, brushed against Malledd and then stuck her tongue out at him when he looked up. “It was worth it,” she whispered to him.
He didn't answer. He didn't even smile.
Malledd did not say a word as he ate; he was deep in thought. He sat staring at his plate, trying to decide what he should do.
Deleva ate standing up, but seemed far less troubled than her brother.
After supper Malledd stood at the back door and beckoned to Deleva until at last her curiosity overcame her. When she finally stomped over to him he led her out to the kitchen yard, where they could speak privately.
The sun was below the horizon but the western sky was still richly golden, and the light of several bright moons shown down as well, painting the hard-packed dirt and the drab wall of the house in pastels. Insects buzzed in the garden nearby, and the scent of cooking fires lingered in the air.
“What do you want?” Deleva demanded, glaring down at her brother.
“I just wanted to ask you something,” he said quietly, standing motionless, his hands behind his back.
“What is it?” she growled. “And if this is a trick, I'll beat your head in.”
“It's not a trick,” Malledd said, struggling to keep his voice steady. “When was the last time I played a trick on you, Deleva?”
“Not long enough ago,” Deleva replied.
“It's been years, Deleva,” Malledd said. “For years, I've been trying my best to stay out of your way or be nice to you, and you still hate me.” He almost trembled as he asked, “Why do you hate me?”
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