The True Oracle Ch. 01

"Salted roast pig, sir knight?" offered a gap-toothed merchant as Gavin rode past. "I guarantee it is the freshest swine you'll ever get in this market."

Gavin gave the man a dubious look. His eyes wandered over the slabs of pinkish meat hanging from the wooden frame of his stall. "And when was the pig slaughtered?"

"Eh . . . just yesterday morn, I swear it."

The knight's eyes narrowed coldly. "You would not lie to a knight in service to the Ministry of Compliance, would you?"

The man swallowed nervously. "Eh, of course not, good sir. What I meant was, as far as I know the pig was slaughtered yesterday."

"And you would never use food dyes to make the flesh look unnaturally pink, would you?" Gavin asked pointedly.

The meat merchant glanced back to the hanging meat for a moment before responding. "It is a trick of the light," the man offered. "I keep the meat moistened."

"But isn't it salted?"

"Repeatedly. Of course, I only offer the best."

Gavin scowled. The hawkers seemed to be getting more and more desperate every day. "I think I will be content with what I have."

The merchant looked relieved. "Well, of course, your garrison keeps you well supplied, I am sure. Have a wonderful day."

Gavin looked about at the other stalls within the square. The wares displayed were anything but choice, but for those desiring something other than fish and kelp, the pickings were slim. They would pay what the merchants wanted for something that, a decade before, would have been destined for the garbage heap.

With a snap of his reigns, Gavin spurred his mount toward the western gate. The crammed three-story homes and businesses along the avenue gave way to a large open space near the gate, within which stood a massive mechanical construct with vaguely human proportions. It was an intimidating, if aging, monstrosity, one of the last of its kind. Owrn was home to three of the mechanical constructs, more than any other city in the land.

"May the Gods never forsake you, knight-gunman," came the mechanized voice of the West Colossus. Gavin gave the man within the towering metal battlesuit a professional nod, saying nothing as he waited. His presence alone was enough for the guardsmen to give him passage.

He watched as the massive drawbridge was lowered. Swirls of orange-amber dust rose from the ground opposite the deep, seawater moat as the immense stone bridge settled into place. Without hesitation, Gavin spurred his steed along the span and into the wastelands.

* * * *

In a time not so long ago, before the sky caught fire and the Blaze burned away most of the world, the land outside the city had been lush and fertile, teeming with farms and gardens that kept nearly everyone from want. But that had been long ago, decades before Gavin had been born into a world that seemed to die more with each passing day.

He left at mid-day beneath the hazy glow of twin suns, knowing it would be another nine hours before nightfall. The plan was simply to reach the Dying Grotto before then; he did not want to make camp upon the dry desert plains where blacknails and gapemaws hunted for travelers.

Digging his boots into the steed's flanks, he urged the beast to the edge of its endurance. Time was not a kind companion on this journey.

* * * *

The silhouette of the distant oasis of the Dying Grotto was revealed to him just as the primary sun slid beneath the horizon. The second sun would give him less than two more hours to reach his mark before it, too, vanished from the world. He would reach the grotto, Gavin was certain, with little time to spare.

But as he guided his mount to the top of a crest, the unmistakable cacophony of violence reached his ears. Gunshots, howls, and screams for mercy floated on the dusty wind. Immediately, Gavin pulled in on the reins, then slid from the saddle of his mount. He gave a voiceless command to the panting steed; its superior training, he knew, would keep it in place until Gavin returned, or issued a different command.

Crouching low, Gavin slid his pistol from its holster and crept to the top of the crest. More screams - cut brutally short - reached him before his eyes settled upon the scene below.

A simple caravan with a draft team of six horses had been ambushed by blacknails. All but one of the horses lay dead. Several bodies of travelers were strewn about, bleeding profusely from wounds inflicted by the hairless, pale-skinned cannibals that had attacked them. The cursed creatures themselves seemed to be after at least one more victim within the large caravan. They surrounded the wagon, jumping and screeching in bloodlust frenzy.

Gavin's eyes narrowed. This was not his fight, he knew, and a smart traveler through the wastelands would take advantage of the fact that the blacknails had found themselves enough prey to satisfy them, and thus continue on.

But through one of the small windows in the caravan, his eyes saw a feminine face masked in terror. The brief flash of youthful, fine skin and hair nearly as dark as a starless night was enough. For a moment, even his duty-bound heart was touched by the helplessness he read. In a single moment, he made his decision.

Standing fearlessly upon the crest, pistol held conspicuously at his side, Gavin let his presence be known through a simple clearing of his throat.

For all their degenerate human nature, the blacknails possessed acute senses, more than adequate enough to detect the sound Gavin made above their own dissonance. Their excited screeching stopped as the monsters looked his way. Pale eyes capable of seeing through the dimmest light glittered in the growing gloom. For a moment, not a move was made.

Then one of them - the leader, the alpha - emitted a commanding shriek, and the others broke off from the caravan to clamor up the hill like skeletal, alabaster primates, snarling and sneering in anticipation of another kill.

Gavin counted six of them coming his way, with the leader remaining behind. Seven, all told. Two more than he had rounds to fire. But he knew he did not need to kill them all.

With a swift, deft move, he raised the pistol and fired. The explosion shattered the night as a brief gout of crimson flame erupted from the barrel of Gavin's weapon.

The onrushing blacknails faltered, haltering their charge out of self-preservation. But none of them had been hit. For a moment, the savages shared dark chuckles, thinking their prey more sound than substance. But then they looked back to their pack leader.

Still beside the caravan, the blacknails' alpha stared at Gavin with a confused jumble of emotions upon its vampiric face. Glimmering eyes drifted down to the large burning hole within the center of it's chest. Legs wobbled as strength ebbed. Falling to it's knees, the pack leader tried to voice a command, but it no longer possessed lungs to give breath. Silently and unceremoniously, the body pitched forward flat.

Gavin stared down along the barrel of his weapon. Without a pack leader, he knew, the others would become confused and unsure. Their confidence lay within the strength of the alpha, which was now a corpse.

"Who will die next?" Gavin asked grimly.

The remaining blacknails exchanged questioning hisses and grunts, then turned and fled. Their pale forms grew dark against the descending night as they vanished into the desert.

Holstering his pistol, Gavin snapped his fingers, indicating his steed to follow. Descending down the slope to the caravan, he approached the small window through which he had seen the feminine face. "Are you alright?" he called.

"Who are you?" cried an hysterical voice.

"I am Gavin Reed, knight-gunman in service to the Ministry of Compliance of Owrn Sovereignty," he replied.

A few moments passed before the face appeared at the window. Much closer now, Gavin could see that the woman beyond was quite lovely, if he could only judge by her face. Youthful but not young, he judged her age to be close to his.

Quivering eyes stared at him. "A knight?"

He nodded. "You are safe," he said. "For now. But the blacknails will regroup, once they've determined a new master for their pack, and they will return. You need to travel far away from here. What is your destination?"

"Sothari Sovereignty," the woman replied. "Is anyone else alive?"

Gavin glanced around at the bodies, then back to the window. "Are you alone in there?"

"Yes."

"Then there is no one else alive."

"Oh, Gods," she sputtered, face ashen.

"Miss," Gavin said. "I understand you must be very emotional, but you should be on your way. One of the horses still lives; you can ride it east to Owrn. Mention my name and they will give you sanctuary until you are able to continue your journey to Sothari."

Her alarmed face appeared in the window. "What? Will you just leave me here?"

"I am on a quest," he responded. "As it is, I have strayed too long already."

"But . . . you can't just leave me!"

"I assume you have food," he said calmly. "And you can gather the armaments from your dead companions. The blacknails won't be back for another hour or so. Enough time for you to put some distance between you and they."

A small door to the caravan suddenly burst outward. The woman, clad minimally in red-stained cloth that just barely covered her breasts, hips and groin, leaned out. Her arms were covered in swirling black lines of ink embedded in the skin. "I am not well-suited for traveling alone," she protested.

Gavin looked the woman over. His eyes read the tattoos upon her arms and noted her bare feet. "You are a zantrist," he commented.

She nodded. "Yes, I am," she said. "So now you know why I cannot travel on my own."

Gavin puzzled a moment. Zantrists were the prize of any court, from Uban Abar to Zhamvari and every sovereignty in between. As both supposed seers and consorts, their talents were unparalleled. In effect, zantrists were akin to royalty in their own right, for they claimed to have the power to see the future and read the past. But Gavin had always dismissed such tales of the zantrists. Only the True Oracle could divine the future with any surety. Still, he knew the zantrists lived protected, cultured lives with no training for survival.

"I do indeed," Gavin responded at last. "And I must apologize for my intervention. I should have let the natural course of events unfold."

The woman gawked. "Do you mean you should have let me die at the hands of those flesh-eating monsters?" she shrieked.

Gavin cocked his head, addressing her unemotionally. "As horrific a death as it would have been, it would have been quick," he said. "Far quicker than what you will suffer out here on your own." He nodded his head and offered the Circle of Life. "My apologies, dear lady."

The woman stared after him, astonished, confused and frightened as the man who had just been her savior turned and walked away.

"If you leave me to die, I will haunt you!" she cried.

Gavin scowled and turned back. "Give me no hasty threats," he growled.

She stared back with pleading eyes. "I beg you. Take me with you. Do with me as you will. I will give myself to you if that is what you want. But do not leave me to this forsaken waste."

He took the few steps between them, advancing upon the woman until he towered over her. To her credit, she stared back, defiant in the face of his intimidation.

"I am a knight in service to the Ministry," he said carefully. "My duty supersedes any . . . personal needs I may have. I do not wish your favors, or your company."

"Then why did you save me?" she countered.

Gavin stared into the woman's eyes. Had he not been charged with his sacred duty, he would have allowed himself to admire the loveliness of the woman before him. But he kept to his resolve, and rather than answer her question, turned away again. "I shall be on my way," he said.

The woman followed him with her eyes as he approached the horse that awaited him. Furtively, she glanced about, desperation making her assess what she did and did not need to gather. Her heart palpitated in anxiety as she realized she was being left behind.

As Gavin climbed into the saddle, he heard the woman's voice calling after him.

"I'll die on my own!"

Gritting his teeth, Gavin spurred his mount, continuing west. He tried not to think of the fate of the woman he left behind.

* * * *

He reached the Dying Grotto not long after the second sun had dipped below the horizon and plunged the world into star-dotted blackness. The gnarled husks of once-thriving trees surrounded him like the skeletal arms of a dead earth-god, reaching up from the parched floor of the desert. With the dark massive boughs to deflect the wind that washed across the plain, the sunken vale was still and quiet.

He found a spot at the base of a massive trunk and pitched his camp. Once he had a small fire burning in the shadow of the old dead tree, Gavin erected a simple lean-to shelter. He drank from his waterskin, slipped a feed bag over the muzzle of his steed, then broke open one of the ration packs from the saddle bags. Salted fish, dry cheese and a wheat biscuit hardly made for a sumptuous meal, but they provided what the knight needed.

He could not stop his mind from wondering as to the fate of zantrist woman he had met. The most optimistic scenario in his mind had her riding hard to Owrn, arriving haggard, tired, but alive and untouched as the morning light spilled across the grand city's walls. She would be accepted, nursed, fed, and provided another guide for her trip to Sothari. Her life would continue on.

But other, less forgiving scenarios plagued him. He imagined the woman being ambushed by blacknails, or gapemaws, or any of the other murderous beasts that hunted the wastelands at night, and being torn apart while cursing his name.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and told him he had done what was right. He had followed, as he always had, the all-consuming mantra of a knight in service to the Ministry. Duty was first and foremost. Individual lives were but grains of sand cast to the wind before the majesty of the True Oracle, who alone knew the destinies of all living things. He had to trust in that simple truth, Gavin knew.

In the midst of his commiserations, he became aware that he was not alone. Shuffles of something moving through the grotto came to his ears. He heard the snap of a dry twig. He smelled something . . . different, but familiar. Something both sweet and desperate.

Without looking, Gavin snatched up the pistol and shifted slightly to aim it behind him, to the direction from which the gentlest of breezes rolled. "For my love of humanity, I should kill you now and be done with it," he said. He let his gaze drift slowly around until he was looking upon the zantrist woman. She had donned a heavy cloak that covered her from neck to foot and led a horse that had been hastily laden with bulky amounts of provisions.

The woman stared at him as she stopped in her tracks, both fear and hopefulness dueling for prominence in her wide, glistening eyes. "Why would you kill an innocent?" she asked.

"To save you from a more gruesome death," he answered. "You've never seen the wastelands before, have you?"

She shook her head. "I've only heard stories."

Gavin returned the pistol to it's holster. "'Stories,'" he repeated with a mirthful tone. "And what have the glorified tales of the world outside your sheltered temple told you?"

She studied him with eyes far more mature than they should have been. "That our world is dying," she said. "That we cling to allegiances and notions of duty and honor that no longer hold any weight."

He glared at her. "Without duty, there is no life," he intoned, invoking one of the many mantras by which he lived.

She stepped forward gingerly. "Perhaps, if you only define yourself through service," she said, eyes wide with trepidation. "Duty is only a part of life."

He turned back to his meal with a frown. "Says the temple harlot."

The woman came around before him, keeping her distance. She lowered herself to her knees on the other side of the fire, folding her legs beneath. The cloak draped about her like a small tent. "It is true that I also belong to a life of service," she admitted. "But there must be more than that, don't you think?"

"When I was a child, I thought so," said Gavin pointedly. "Then I matured, and discovered we all have a place in the world."

Her eyes fell to the fire, watching the flames, seeing within them ghosts of things she had not yet experienced. "When I was young," she said. "When I was first taken to the temple because of my gifts, I dreamed of being a princess, or an adventurer. Life was still so simple and unspoiled then. But as I grew came the cynicism. It was told to me, again and again, that we are not harbingers of our own fate. We cannot change what we were meant to be."

Gavin snorted. "Then you were taught well."

She stared at him above the flames. "I did not believe it then, and I do not believe it now."

"Then you have not learned what you were taught," he snapped, standing abruptly.

The woman's eyes widened. "What are you doing?"

He gave her an amused look. "If you must know, I need to relieve myself," he said before stepping away from the fire.

She watched him walk toward a nearby tree, then turned back to her absent watch over the fire. She shifted beneath the cloak, finding that it scratched her fine skin. She had become accustomed, during her years of training at the temple, to wearing little in the way of clothing, and often nothing at all. But the cold desert demanded more protection than her minimalist garb.

"You really should have gone east," Gavin growled as he returned to the fire. "Owrn would have taken you in and arranged for passage to Sothari once you explained yourself."

"And I would have been back on the road to servitude," she said. "I would rather chance my life with a knight-gunman traveling the wastelands."

He frowned. "Is your life truly that terrible?"

"Terrible?" she repeated. "No, I suppose not 'terrible,' but it is hardly my life, especially now that I have been promised to another."

"You are to be married, then."

"If I continue to Sothari, yes."

"Then why delay?" Gavin asked. "In Sothari, your protected life would continue. I am confused as to why you would not want that."

Her eyes softened as she regarded him. "Do you know anything of the zantrist life?"

"I've met a few of your kind before."

She laughed, a short, sharp, tittering sound. "'My kind,'" she repeated. "As if I am of some other race." She shook her head with a rueful smile that turned nostalgic as she spoke. "Zantrist training is not like what knights, or surveyors, or marksmen go through. There is regimen and discipline, yes, but there are also equal amounts of freedom. No single zantrist does everything the same way. We are encouraged to develop our own particular skills."

Gavin gave the woman a look. "Oh, I've been fortunate enough to sample some zantrist skills now and then," he said.

She smiled back cattily. "I'm sure you have sampled some small measure of a zantrist's ways," she said. "But our sexual prowess is secondary to our true abilities."

He studied her face. "Prophecy," he said dubiously.

She nodded. "Prophecy," she repeated. "But it is a double-edged blade. It makes us valuable to others, so valuable in fact that we are treated as prize possessions. Pampered, spoiled, but still not free."

"Most in the world would willingly trade lives with you," Gavin pointed out.

"Certainly, at first they would. But when everything you do is under the watchful eye of someone else, when you are so protected from the world by bodyguards and laws that you dare not make friends outside the temple . . . privilege is just another word for a comfortable life of slavery. And then, of course, we are called upon to divine the future for some gluttonous politician who wishes to stab another in the back, or to determine if a marriage will result in healthy children for the ruling family."