the oracle and the warlord

Karina Sumner-Smith

The Warlord arrives at dawn. She is greeted with every courtesy: with a true-wood chair on which to rest, with pale yellow tea steeped from wildflowers, with clean water to wash her hands and feet. Normal water, she is assured.

“I will stand,” the Warlord says, staring up at the temple’s closed doors as she shakes out her dripping hands. Those hands are scarred and callused, chapped from the dry mountain air; yet her touch is gentle, her nod gracious, as she takes the clay cup of tea.

“As you wish,” Andra says in a tone that implies she will be standing a long time, Warlord or not.

For five long days, Andra and the Oracle’s other attendants watched the Warlord’s party make its way up the steep trail. The smoke-belching cars had been abandoned early in the journey; the soldiers upon whose backs the cars’ contents had been piled had begun to lag behind but hours later. The leaders had pressed on regardless.

The road to the temple is not an easy one; and when weather and luck brings any petitioner too quickly to their carved doors, a rock slide or fallen tree might be arranged. For all the party’s speed, the Warlord’s red pennant had stopped any such intercessions. This time.

A decision Andra now regrets. Every Warlord asks the Oracle one question at the beginning of their rule—the same question, always answered the same way. Yet not in living memory has a Warlord come to ask that question from their own lips.

One last prophecy, Sayenne had said. One more and the waters will release me.

Why did it have to be this one?

The sun is high before Andra consents to have the temple’s great doors opened. The doors creak and groan against their hinges as they swing wide, the weight of iron and ancient oak enough to stop an army. This army, they let inside.

She has timed the opening just right. As the Warlord strides forward, her road-weary commanders at her back, the sun reaches its zenith. A beam of sunlight falls like a blessing, like a blade, full upon the Oracle.

The Oracle sits upon a stone chair, a slender figure radiant in white. Fabric flows over her like water; and every piece, from the shimmering veil that covers her face to the skirt that pools across the floor, has been painstakingly embroidered with cracked pearls and shards of glass. The light hits her and she comes alight.

But the Warlord pauses in the doorway, standing for a moment like a victory statue made flesh, and at the sight Andra’s dawning smile dies. For all that her hems are mud-spattered, her dark skin powdered pale by road dust, her jacket stained by old blood and new sweat, the Warlord seems more god than woman.

“Step forward,” Andra says. “The Oracle will consider your offerings.”

The Warlord piles riches on the polished floor, each a sample of the things her weary wagon train still drags up the mountain. Carrots and onions. Bolts of heavy, grey cloth. Bundles of blight-born wheat, golden seed heads hiding among the black. More and more. The Warlord’s commanders bring forth the offerings, their stiff backs made to bend as they kneel before the Oracle.

Anyone might journey to the temple; anyone might ask a single question. But every answer has its price, and the Warlord in her new-won armour thinks that with such gifts the price is paid.

It’s not enough. It will never be enough.

Yet as the offerings pile up, the Oracle goes still on her dais, except for the flutters of her veil, the flash of bead and faceted stone. One breath. Another. Silence spreads from her like a stain.

At last come the ritual words: “I will hear your question.”

The Warlord steps forward and the attendants ease back so that when the Warlord speaks into the veiled shell of the Oracle’s ear, Andra hears only a murmur. She knows without listening what the Warlord has come to ask. They all do. The words change, the Warlords change, even the Oracle changes; but the question remains the same.

How can I triumph over the blight-born?

How can I lead our people to victory?

How can I win this endless war?

News comes slowly to the mountain peaks, brought by petitioners when it’s brought at all. Still, Andra has heard of this new Warlord: her sudden rise through the ranks; the victories she claimed against all odds, blight-born falling before her like grasses flattened by a storm wind. Andra’s even heard of the Warlord’s more recent battle against her predecessor, a quick and bloody conflict that some still name betrayal, no matter that such fights are the way of things.

Surely, her question is no different.

Say no.The words are there on Andra’s tongue and she struggles to bite them back unsaid, struggles to swallow. She bows her head and closes her eyes and listens to the soft murmur as the Warlord speaks on and on.

Never has an Oracle turned away a Warlord’s first request, no matter that all know there can be no new answer. Let this be the first time. Andra would look up if she could; would meet the Oracle’s eyes, those dark shadows beneath the glimmering veil, and she would plead. One last prophecy, yes—but not this.

At last, the Warlord falls silent and Andra opens her eyes. Andra thinks that the Warlord will return to stand before her commanders or the piled offerings. A reminder of all that’s at stake; a threat, perhaps, of what might follow.

Instead she unfastens the buckles that hold her sword and laser rifle to her back. She places the weapons, one after the other, on the polished stone as if they are her true offerings. Then she kneels, stretches her arms before her, and lays her forehead upon the floor.

There is silence then, a silence that has such presence it’s as if the whole room vibrates with the echoes of an unheard bell.

Minutes pass. The sun shifts overhead, as does the blade of light it sends into the cold temple. Soon the sunlight touches the scabbarded sword and its scarred leather hilt; it lights the flat black metal of the rifle and shifts across the Warlord’s outstretched hands, her palms flat in supplication. Sunlight falls upon the Warlord’s head and turns the close-shorn curls of her hair into a crown.

“I will ask the waters your question,” the Oracle says.

The Warlord stands, gestures thanks, picks up her weapons. Attendants rush to open the doors, usher the military men outside, and gather the riches spilled across the floor. Andra hears none of it, believes none of it. There is only the rush of blood in her ears.

The Oracle lifts a hand in dismissal, and the scraps of polished metal that ring her fingers flash. In that moment she is poised and calm and unknowable, the waters’ magic in human form.

Together, they watch as the Warlord retreats, step by backwards step, until the doors slam shut once more. The sound echoes.

The Oracle turns, reaches, her hand shaking.

“Andra,” she whispers. “Help me stand.”

There are rituals to be followed, even now.

The Oracle’s attendants cluster around as she holds out her hands and lets them pluck the rings from her fingers, one by one. They unwrap the shawl from her shoulders and hold it aloft, making the beads strung into its length clink and chime. Her veil comes next, lifted away from her face and hair; that hair, its dark length braided about her head, is undone.

Then her embroidered robes are taken away. Their weight had staggered Sayenne when placed on her shoulders; now, as they’re lifted, she staggers again. Hands reach out, catch her, guide her down to sitting.

Next should come the ritual washing: the Oracle’s hands and feet cleansed once more, salt touched to her eyelids and lips, then rainwater poured over her naked body, once, twice, three times. But the water is cold and already Sayenne is shaking. Instead they wrap her in a heavy wool blanket and bring her tea. She does not protest the deviation, not anymore, and her silence feels like defeat.

Robes and adornments safely put away, Andra kneels at Sayenne’s feet. Not in supplication, as the Warlord did; not stiffly, as did her commanders; but in kindness. She takes first one of Sayenne’s purpled feet in her hands, then the other, massaging each until the circulation returns.

If the Warlord could see the Oracle now, Andra thinks, she would not recognize her. Gone is the straight line of her back and shoulders, forced by the stone chair’s unforgiving shape. Gone, too, is the effortless command in her stillness and gestures both. With the robes taken away, it’s easy to see what the waters have done to her body—what she has done by choice, she would protest, in service of her duty.

The bones of her wrists and ankles stand stark; her cheekbones are metal-sharp with hollows carved beneath. Andra takes morsels of bread dipped in milk and hands them to her, waits as Sayenne lifts them, hesitant and weary, to her mouth. Sayenne’s eyes are the worst, for in them Andra can see glimpses of the person she once was, each glimpse a promise that Sayenne’s gap-riddled memory makes lie.

I don’t recognize her, comes the thought and Andra pushes it away.

There are five in training to take Sayenne’s place when at last the waters scoop her hollow. Four girls, all raised here since they were little more than toddling babies. Sold to the Oracle like cattle, one says now, old enough to understand such things; yet Andra saw them arrive, handed over red-faced and squalling as their parents too wept, and believes it was not coin that motivated those transfers.

There is a boy, too, small and dark and quiet, who walked here on his own, step by hungry step up the mountain. He does not speak of a home that is not these rock walls. It is on his too-narrow shoulders that Andra’s hopes rest—when she is awake enough, and her heart is quiet enough, for her to hope at all.

She would call him now, if she could. She would call any of them, all of them, to pass along the Warlord’s request and the responsibility of an answer. But she does not have the power to choose a new Oracle, no more than any other attendant or even Sayenne herself. Only the waters do that, in their own way, in their own time.

Still Andra does not speak, not as she brings another blanket or brushes out Sayenne’s dark hair, not as she tidies away the half-eaten food and barely touched tea and the drips from each on Sayenne’s chest. Around her, the other attendants talk softly of the Warlord’s gifts. They will eat well this coming winter, and stay warm; they will make clothes and weave new rope and have things of value to trade in the village a week’s journey away. All true, and she tries not to hate them for their excitement.

“Are you ready?” Andra asks at last.

Sayenne blinks and looks up, confused. Fear seeps into her face, tightening lips and brow—then she takes a breath, shudders, and awareness returns. She makes to rise; fails.

“Just a moment.” She sags against her chair. “Just let me catch my breath.”

Her eyes flutter and fall closed. For a time, the thin whispering of her breath is the only sound in the room.

The Oracle sleeps and the attendants let her, knowing there is little else they may give.

Sleep does not last long—it rarely does these days—though perhaps it does her some good. With help, Sayenne stands, dresses, and makes her way into the heart of the temple.

Not the audience chamber, for all its stark splendour; not the rooms where she and her attendants live and work and rest; but the stairs at their very centre. Stone stairs leading downward, and the waters that lie far beneath.

Here the other attendants leave them, falling away like red leaves in autumn. It’s just the two of them, Andra and Sayenne, and the long way down into darkness.

Step, pause. Step, pause.

The rough-hewn steps are cold, their surface polished smooth by the passage of untold feet. It’s hard to see by the light of the candle Andra holds in her left hand, yet one candle is all she dares anymore; she needs her right hand, her strong hand, to hold Sayenne steady.

Step, pause. Step, pause. Breathe.

At the bottom they come not to a room but a cave, one so large that the candle has no hope of illuminating the far walls. There is a span of dry ground some ten feet deep and twenty across; a span of rock and sand, gently sloping downward. Waters lap at its edge, black as oil.

There are rituals to be followed here too, yet Andra has no heart for meditation or prayer, and Sayenne has not the strength. Instead, Andra lowers Sayenne to the gritty ground, roots the candle to an outcropping of stone with a drip of its own wax, and finishes the preparations.

A thick wool blanket upon the ground; another laid out as a waiting towel. An ancient book drawn from a chest hidden in the stairs’ lee, flipped open to the most recent page—a page filled with her own slanted hand. Easy motions, completed almost without thought. She’d need to read the book to know how many times she and Sayenne have done this before.

The thought tightens her throat, her chest; Andra concentrates on breathing. Then she reaches for Sayenne and helps her make her careful way to the waiting blanket.

All this past year, Sayenne has been counting down, announcing her remaining prophecies as she reaches the waters’ edge. Four left, three left, two left. Now, this last time, she’s silent. Yet the motions are the same: pushing away the robes so recently wrapped around her, bowing her head, stepping forward on unsteady feet. Wincing as she touches the freezing black water with a single toe.

It’s too much.

“Sayenne, please. Stop.” Andra hadn’t been able to speak, not when the other attendants were there to hear. Now, in this sacred place, there are just the two of them. The words tumble out: “You don’t have to do this.”

Sayenne makes a sound that could be a laugh or a breath or a cough, but she pauses, then steps back from the edge. “This?” she manages.

“The Warlord’s prophecy. It’s useless.” Andra doesn’t need the waters to show her that truth.

Every Warlord asks the same question, and every Oracle gives the same answer, no matter how long they search the waters, no matter how deep they dive. That, too, had been predicted by the first Oracle; it was the first truth he’d drawn forth, giving use of his right hand for the knowledge. That there can be no victory against the blight-born, no matter how long or how hard they fight.

Still they ask, and still they die, and the blight blackens all who dare oppose it.

Andra reaches for Sayenne, wanting to take her hand, touch her face; instead, she steadies her as she sways. They could not leave without Sayenne’s last prophecy, but...“I could ask you a question. Something easy, something small. Dive for that answer, and then tell the Warlord what we already know.”

Andra had hoped that she’d see some conflict in Sayenne’s expression, some tremble in her hand as a way out appeared before her. As if they have not talked of escape a thousand times before

Foolish hope.

Sayenne only turns away from the candle’s light. She stares at the waters’ dark surface for a long, unsteady time. “She didn’t ask how she might win,” she says softly. “She said she might see a path to peace.”

Peace? The word is incomprehensible. Their people have fought the blight-born since the cities fell. Longer. Fought to reclaim territory, to push back the blight and the creatures—once-human and animal alike—that it twisted within its grasp.

Peace was the word for the time when the fire burned low, when all was quiet beyond locked doors and shuttered windows. Peace was the moment before waking, curled in covers warm and soft. Peace was Sayenne lying in the summer grass and Andra beside her, their hands entwined—

“She’s lying,” Andra says instead. “Desperate.”

Still Sayenne looks at the waters, down and down into the black no candle might pierce, as if here—whole and safe and dry—she might see the answers the depths held. As if she might grasp those answers, hold them, raise them aloft. Her final price unpaid.

She meets Andra’s eyes. “No,” she says. “I don’t think so.”

A path to peace. That is no small prophecy, no small answer to ask the waters to yield. What can Sayenne give of herself equal to that answer? There is, Andra thinks, so little left of her.

At the same time: so much left to lose.

And there, written in the lines of Sayenne’s tired, determined expression, is an answer of her own. One last prophecy—one that might change the world’s shape and all that might follow. It is, in the end, the whole of the Oracle’s purpose.

“Sayenne,” Andra manages. Everything else—every word, every sound—sticks in her throat. She wants to say—

No. She can’t.

For no matter what she feels, what she wants, what she had once dared dream, Sayenne must enter the waters. She needs to be strong enough to return. Burden enough for one small, hurting woman to carry.

Andra bows her head and what she says is ritual, though such things had been left years in their past. “Clear waters, Oracle. May they hear your need and accept your gift.”

Sayenne meets her eyes, nods. Then step by unsteady step, she walks into the water, her hair trailing behind her. To her knees, to her waist, to her shoulders.

Then, in a small swirl of bubbles, the dark water closes over her head and she’s gone.

The candle burns out. Andra lights another from the wick’s ember and sits watching the flame sway.

When it too burns to nothing, she lights two more, setting each on the rocks to either side of her. Two candles down, she thinks. She should return soon. The surface of the water is black glass, every ripple and bubble from Sayenne’s disappearance long since vanished, no hint of a current betraying change.

As a distraction, Andra opens the ancient book on her lap as if she were telling the youngest attendants a story. Brings forth the needle-tipped pen and presses it to her wrist, hard, until she feels it pierce the scarred skin, then lets the nib drink deep. Writes the day, the petitioner, the time of the Oracle’s vanishing; the rest must wait until surfacing. In the shifting candlelight, her blood is black.

Above, row after row of even words tell similar tales. There is Sayenne’s most recent prophecy, that for the young herder who came to ask the Oracle the whereabouts of his stolen goats. The payment, twists of dried jerky and a container of salt. The price, Sayenne’s memory of the week before.

Farther, halfway up the page. The petitioner, a mother seeking word of her children, lost to the war. The payment, three large quilts stitched by hand, one for each child. The price, Sayenne’s singing voice and the breath to sustain it.

Farther still. The petitioner, a landholder desperately seeking word of a cure for the blight-sent fever that raged through his home village, endangering the life of any child under five. The payment, a full basket of eggs, three hunting knives, and as much hard bread as he’d been able to carry. The price, Sayenne’s ability to dance, to walk without support, to stand more than a moment unaided.

If Andra looks far enough back, the writing changes to that of her predecessor speaking of the Oracle before Sayenne, the blood of his script a deep brown. Before that, another Oracle, and another, until the writing is faded pale and the words seem written in a language she does not know. She closes the book.

Sayenne has been down a long time. But if word of the war is a big prophecy, if a futile one, she cannot imagine how large is the shape of one that speaks of peace.

“She needs more time.” Andra is shocked at the raw sound of her voice. It echoes, unseen rock walls sending the words back twisted and forlorn.

Andra stands, paces as much as the stone beach allows. She stares into the darkness; she hears the whisper of her breath, the crunch of stone beneath her feet, the gentle lap of water upon the shore. She lights another candle, and another, as the others grow short and gutter to nothing.

And still Sayenne does not rise.

Can an Oracle drown beneath the weight of her prophecy? Andra does not know, only fears it with a dread so cold it’s ice.

Without thinking, she steps toward the water. Freezes, and shies back.

Only the Oracle can enter the water. Except that is more tradition than truth; four times Andra has waded into the shallows to support an exhausted, weakened Sayenne back to shore.

This is different and she knows it.

Her role is to support the Oracle. To help her to the water’s edge and back from it; to record the prophecies or help deliver them to the petitioner. She cannot interfere.

Yet Andra has never only been Sayenne’s attendant. They grew up together within the temple, close as sisters. As they grew older, they were not sisters but something more: best friends and lovers, the two of them united against all else. The waters had changed that, slowly, slowly.

The Oracle needs her to stay on the shore, to wait and watch and record. Sayenne needs something else, something greater. Andra throws her robes to the ground and strides into the water.

The first step is cold, the second is ice; the third stabs like a knife, the pain so sharp, the chill so intense, Andra wonders if she’s bleeding. The waters don’t want her here but she pushes on, farther, deeper, gasping.

To her knees. To her waist. To her shoulders.

“Sayenne?” She reaches, fingers spread wide as she searches the water. Nothing, nothing. Deeper, then. She takes a step, another, and the stone beneath her feet falls away. She barely has time to take a breath before the water closes over her head.

Black and cold. Andra kicks, seeking the surface—reaches up and can’t find air. Panic comes, shaped like a scream—but she doesn’t need to breathe yet, she realizes, and struggles toward calm.

No light pierces the water, no sound carries within it. Down, she thinks, not that she can tell one way from another. She dives.

Sayenne had tried to explain what it was like, diving the waters for prophecy. It had been new to her, then—wondrous—and the parts of herself that she’d given had seemed so small. “It’s not like water,” she’d said. “Not when you’re down there.”

“Like what, then?”

“Like dreaming. Like falling. Like...fighting.”

“Fighting?”

She’d shaken her head, dispelling her distant look with a laugh. “I don’t have the words.”

Andra understands now. There is only darkness and her movement through it—or perhaps she’s staying still, falling forever in one place. She reaches, stretching, grasping. Sees Sayenne in her mind and heart, and fights to find her.

Yet what she sees is a woman long gone. A woman laughing by evening firelight; a woman with arms made strong by chopping wood, carrying water, kneading bread in the communal kitchen. A person young and whole, with a temper slow to spark and slower to burn out; a person who argued for the fierce joy of it, who sang without thought, who scribbled bits of poems in the moment upon waking.

So many of those things are gone, or lost to the waters, Andra knows not which. Here, now, that loss doesn’t matter—doesn’t slow the reach of her hand or ease her desperate yearning.

Hair brushes against her fingers, floating free. Farther she reaches, wanting, hoping—

There. Andra’s hand touches flesh, her fingers close around Sayenne’s arm. She is weak and freezing, but alive.

Andra pulls, struggles to rise, but the waters hold them fast. No—not the waters themselves, but the prophecy.

There is no light here, no colour, but Andra sees it nonetheless: the vast knowledge that Sayenne has tried to draw into herself and that now drags her down. It fills Sayenne and overflows into the water, a darker black, a colder chill. There is too much to hold—too much, even, to touch.

Oh, Sayenne, comes the thought. What did you give?

In the darkness that is and is not water, that is and is not time, echoes Sayenne’s reply: Everything.

The why of it could break Andra. Yet, seeing the possibility that surrounds Sayenne like a shroud, that nests heavy in her hollowed-clean heart, at last Andra understands: the Oracle fights not to see and tell of the future, but to birth it. To find the slimmest, briefest flicker of chance in all the possible futures and draw it up into the light.

I can’t, Sayenne says—or perhaps Andra only imagines the words, sees them shaped by the struggle of her beloved’s ravaged body and mind against the waters’ dark. It’s too much, I can’t—

She won’t, Andra sees that much. Not without help.

Yet the prophecy—the future—is not hers to claim or shape; even now it retreats from Andra, shies from her, as she shies from it. She could cut this future loose, she realizes. She could pull it from Sayenne, bit by painful bit, and draw only the woman from the water, the Warlord’s wishes be blighted.

There is still something of Sayenne left to save. Some sliver of her humour, the edge of her smile, her determination. Her love. Even now, they could make a life for themselves. It is all Andra wants: a life beyond the temple.

And, in the doing, she’d end this half-glimpsed future forever. A future, perhaps, where the blight wouldn’t rain down its corruption, or blacken their crops, or twist living things into creatures dark and unfeeling. A future that holds more than war.

Not an end to the war through victory, so long sought, yet an end nonetheless.

Every answer has its price, every future is bought and paid for. Hope, too, is a powerful coin; hope, or the loss of it. Andra feels it slip from her, the pain of sacrifice briefly numbed by cold.

I’ve got you, she says then, her heart speaking without words. Let it in. I’ll carry you home.

Sayenne yields, the struggle leaving her like a rush of blood, the future entering her like a deep, full breath.

Andra draws Sayenne’s fragile body to her chest in the darkness, wraps her arms tight, and rises.

The candles have almost burned out. Andra pays them no heed as she staggers from the water, Sayenne in her arms. The blankets are waiting. She pauses just long enough to wrap Sayenne’s shaking body in thick wool before lifting her again and starting for the stairs. Even dripping wet, Sayenne weighs little more than a child; and, arms quivering, leg muscles afire, it takes all of Andra’s strength to carry her.

The Oracle speaks—or tries to.

“Shh,” Andra tells her. “Not yet, beloved. Just a little bit longer.” Wishing that the words were for her; knowing that they’re not. Andra can only be thankful as she struggles upward that there is no candlelight, for she cannot bear to see Sayenne’s face. Not yet.

“Get the Warlord,” she cries when she sees the light of the temple above her. Her voice carries. “Bring the Warlord!” Again she shouts, and again, so that by the time she reaches the landing, the other attendants have gathered. The youngest gasps to see the Oracle limp and shuddering in Andra’s arms. An older attendant only touches Andra on the shoulder and says, “This way.”

No ceremony now, no robes and sunlight, no tradition. There is only a small attendant’s room with a blazing fire, a cup of tea forgotten on a table by the hearth. Andra sits on the bed and holds Sayenne to her chest, cradling her. Still she cannot look at her face, cannot look in her eyes and see only prophecy.

When the Warlord arrives, Andra sees her shock, quickly hidden. At the Warlord’s back is an attendant, paper and pen in hand.

“Now, love,” Andra says to Sayenne, stroking her wet hair.

At last the Oracle speaks, whispering the words of the future she’s carried. The Warlord kneels before her, and the attendant writes so quickly her pen is a blur, and Andra holds Sayenne, just holds her, as the words pour out. As the future’s birthed, moment by moment, into the present.

Andra closes her eyes, tries to breathe. Sayenne would be happy, if she could, that this is her final prophecy—an end to blight and blood. Andra cannot be.

Because she has carried something else with her from the water, a burden not of arms or flesh or heart, yet as heavy. Heavier. She knows the day when Sayenne will die. She knows the last confused words Sayenne’s chapped lips will shape, and her own heartbroken reply. Knows, even, the shape of Sayenne’s final breath. Its sound, and the silence after.

It is her first prophecy.