The Oracle of Valcyra (Closed for ArcticAvenue)

[BlindKitsune]

She hadn't always been an Oracle. "The" Oracle of Valcyra. Whatever. Before the priests found her she had simply been Ceriana; or "that girl" when they'd even bothered to notice her at all. A small town on the High Wold was no place for a young girl to grow up if she was in the least vulnerable. In one of the major cities of the south there might even be some provision for a girl born without sight to grow up happily and make a good life for herself. That was hardly the case in her home town, where she'd been nothing but a helpless mouth. A useless cook, a poor seamstress, as long as she could remember Ceriana had been told how grateful she should be for her care, that her mother was a saint to put up with her and that she should pray every day that her parents would find her a good man to marry who would take care of her despite all her flaws.

Years upon years of this had had its effect on her and by her mid-teens she had gotten used to being invisible. She wandered the town, one hand on the walls and sitting in corners where she wouldn't be stepped on or in the way. That seemed to make her invisible, as the other townsfolk forgot that "blind" and "deaf" weren't the same thing at all. Over time, she learnt all the town's secrets and learnt to trade them to a select few for some small measure of support and acceptance.

No good deed went unpunished though, and those whose secrets she spread began to say she knew far more than any good girl should. A wicked girl, they whispered, she must have made a pact with dark forces or cavorted with demons so that they would whisper their lies into her ears. In the end she was seized by an angry mob and beaten, her arms bound while they prepared the fires for her. That was when the priests came, two of them facing down the entire rural town. They had followed signs that pointed to her as the new voice of the goddess Valcyra after the death of the previous Oracle. Suddenly all the whispers about her unnatural perception paid off, and the bloodied waif was released into the custody of the priesthood.

The echo of voices from the corridors above broke Ceriana from her reverie, and she sat upright on her straw pallet. Being the celebrated and honoured voice of the Goddess wasn't as comfortable an arrangement as she had once imagined - but then it wasn't truly her the priesthood valued, but the voice that filled her. Most of the time she was simply kept here in "safety", her only human contact the young priest assigned as her keeper. She ate when he brought her food. She slept when she was tired. Her solitude was intended to help her maintain the purity of her vision, she'd been told when she was first brought to the cell five years ago. She didn't know about that though; she never remembered Valcyra's presence.

The voices echoed through the inner hallways of the shrine once more. She shifted restlessly - the stillness abruptly too much for her - and stood. She did this more often than she would ever admit, and as she began to pace the breadth of her own private world she imagined the oracle before her walking in the same footsteps. Tracing her fingers over the same sinuous, serpentine patterns engraved into the cool stone wall. Five steps to the corner. Turn left. Eight steps here, feeling the broad archway lift and fall over the door. Turn left. Five steps again, stepping carefully around the chamberpot. Turn left, two steps and her fingers brushed the foot of her pallet.

Maybe years from now the next oracle would walk the same circuit? Like her, merely a husk for the power that filled her. Drawing her thin cotton wrap around her, she turned back toward the archway as she heard steps approaching the door.

Was it time again already?

 

[ArcticAvenue]

The old priest eyed Gallus with a mix of disdain and suspicion. Behind him water dripped from the poorly roofed stone room, and the dead skies of the storm cast little of it’s light through the singular window. The dull light from the two solitary candles only seemed to enhance the dirty old man’s face. Both wore the dark, heavy, rough cloth robes and the heavy chains of the order; yet the old man’s seniority was distinct by the cords wrapped over his shoulders. The place was cold. The old priest was cold. No words came from the man, drawing out the doubt that floated in his head. It took little time before Gallus shifted his head from the old man’s stare and focus on the ground.

“Do not turn away, boy,” the priest commanded darkly.

Gallus obeyed, returning his eyes to the bearded priest without raising his head in support.

The priest continued his gaze, allowed the space between them draw out long and dark. Finally he asked a question that stood between them more like a damnation then a query. “Do you know why you are here?”

Gallus answered in a way that made it more of a question, and in a way that sounded as he knew it was the wrong answer. “I was chosen by Valcyra as a watcher?”

“Your father forsook you. Cast you aside. You failed to be of strong will like your father. You are too weak to be a soldier. The order took you in because he paid us to. We would not have taken you in if his tribute went unpaid.”

“Yes sir,” Gallus mumbled Never had a priest used such hard words to Gallus since he joined the order. The words rung true, not from rumor but from fact. Gallus, ill for much of his childhood, never grew like his brothers did. They stand as tall and broad as a gladiator. Their voices boom with strength and honor. Only once the labor of the order’s duties did he start to gather any strength of body at all, only the dark brown tufts of hair cut above the collar matched his brothers own locks, yet he will never be as dominating in size like his brothers. It was this reason alone, his father, a prominent member of the senate, sent him away. His father thought the order would take pity on him. It did not.

The old man’s dark voice boomed louder. “We fed you, we offered you knowledge. You failed to learn. You failed to work your share. You don’t deserve to wear the chains of the Order of Valcyra.”

“Yes sir,” Gallus repeated.

“If not but for the graciousness of Valcyra herself, you would be cast away. At best, sent to a distant temple where the savages would tear you to shreds for meat.”

“Yes sir.”

“Instead, Valcyra blesses you. Choses you to be a watcher. Thus cursing us of this house to once again show you favor.”

It had been just days before that it happened. Brought to the Shrine of the Oracle in passage to meet with the masters of the order. While standing near where the oracle speaks, he was confused by his fellow priests interpretation of the words spoken through the shrine. In a moment of insubordination he question them on what they speak; and in that moment it became clear that Gallus was a Watcher, that of the order whom was blessed with the means to care for and decypher the voice of the oracle. Since, he was relegated to the cold damp rooms of this house, awaiting word of what this new duty means, and what new punishment awaits him.

Gallus swallowed hard, turned his head away, “I only do what Valcyra asks of me.”

Once again silence filled the room like the dark damp air that inhabited already. How many times the preists of the order punished him with leather or wood. How many times have the fists of his brother broken his flesh, broken his pride. How many times so many others hurt him so that he would learn his lesson. Yet this silence seemed as painful as the rest.

Finally the old priest rose from his chair. He pulled forth a single key on a single large ring and offered it to Gallus. “Come, I will show you the girl.” The old man left his room, and walked down the dungeness hallways. The further they walked, the darker and colder the air became. This felt less like a place where a most honored being may live, and more like a prison. As he walked, the old priest lectured. “I will now take you to her. Do not be fooled, Gallus. She is not Valcyra, nor is every word she speak holy. She is just a vessel. A voice that only comes forth when needed, and then returned to her shelter. You are not protecting the girl, you are protecting the means to speak with our goddess. The oracle will always continue. The voice cannot be lost. The girl … is already lost. Is that understood.”

“Yes sir.”

He stopped in front of a large wooden door. There was no window to what lay inside. Only a single ring for a handle, and a single large lock for the door. “Use your key. She will not harm you.”

 

[BlindKitsune]

The heavy key worked loudly in the lock; blackened by age, yet kept from corrosion through the magic of the Goddess. Or, some said, by constant use. Whichever tale you preferred to believe, the noise was enough to catch Ceriana's ear in the tomb-like silence and when the door creaked open the torch in the leathery old priest's hand captured her full profile. The closed eyes, the yellowy hair, stringy with sweat and unwashed.

Her thin face betrayed that her meals had been none too generous of late, while the shape of her petite frame was well-masked by the shapeless wrap she held wrapped tight at her collar. The flickering torch was the only light in the cell - the priesthood evidently had decided not to waste flames on one who could not see them. As a result the heavy stone of the lower temple had leached the heat from the air and she was left on the point of shivering.

She held herself with a sort of desperate pride, the young oracle. Not even a score of years, she cocked her head for all the world as though she had summoned them an age ago, and they had only now - finally - attended on her.

"You're early today, Priest. Usually I hear the gongs sound twice before you come to prepare me - is Valcyra no longer honored here?"

The preparations usually took twenty minutes or more, and weren't something she greatly enjoyed. The gongs had become her signal to brace herself, wrap courage tightly around and accept the cursory rough preparations with as much grace as she could. If they had changed the gongs, or she had stopped hearing them somehow... She fought to keep the look of betrayal from her face. She would not show weakness. She would not give them that.

"Calm yourself girl," the old priest sneered. "It is not the place of the pitcher to choose where and when it is poured." Theirs was clearly a long-standing unfriendship, and he turned to Gallus as though her presence was utterly unimportant.

"You see? Lost. And now her care is your burden, and you can at last repay some of our limitless generosity." He drew himself up haughtily. "You completed your initiate somehow, though how I cannot say. I presume you know what is needed to prepare her for the Rite?" Just that morning the lay priests in the valley had flashed the signal that a seeker of note was beginning the ascent and would be there by nightfall.

She had been alone save for the old priest for for so long, Ceriana had been a little slow on the uptake. Why was the priest talking like- "Hello? Is there someone else there?"

 

[ArcticAvenue]

It was a girl.

Of course, he should have expected the Oracle to be a girl, but still, it was a girl.

Maybe he thought she would be more of an old dried up withered creature. The way the priests talked about the vessel, he expected her to be the destroyed shell of a woman. A being that needed only to be a voice for the goddess, and the flesh the came with it wouldn’t be expect to be more than a messenger bag.

Instead, she was no older than he was. She was small, but no smaller than he was either. The light color of her hair, her thin frame, her careful movements seemed to be no different than the girls Gallus once looked upon fondly before he was forced into the order. She looked like she had been kept in this place without bathing for a long time, but it was understandable with this place. The only remarkable feature were her eyes. They seemed distant and unfocused. He had been told she was blind, like all oracles, but never had he seen someone blind before; never could he consider how she may be when he met her.

When she spared with the old priest, something stirred in him. He should have been bothered, like the old priest, but her words. She shouldn’t speak to any man of the order that way. Yet this woman, so thin, so frail, so seemingly helpless; she stood her ground. It was futile, and it appeared she understood that, but still, it was something that made him smile slightly.

"You completed your initiate somehow, though how I cannot say. I presume you know what is needed to prepare her for the Rite?" The old priest boomed at him.

He nodded his head wordlessly. He didn’t actually, only heard she was to be prepared. Yet he didn’t want to be punished, not in front of the oracle.

"Hello? Is there someone else there?"

Gallus turned back to the girl. She looked out towards the door like she was in some darkness with no way to see through. Here he was, only on the other side of the small room from her, yet she could not even be sure he was there.

“Well then,” the old priest grumbled. “I will leave you to it.” He turned and stepped away down the hall.

Gallus stood at the doorway, now probably as scared as he had been for months. It was on him now. It was his duties to be the watcher. If only he understood more what that means. Seeing the girl there still searching for someone, he thought that first would be to let her know him.

He coughed, slid his feet, the sandles making a rough sound on the sandy stone floor. “Ah, yes … Miss,” he finally spoke. “I am also here. I … I am Gallus. I am your Watcher.” After a brief breath to see her reaction he thought to add. “For now on, that is. I am your Watcher for now on. Valcyra decided as such.”

He waited there, by the door, shifting his hands to rub together dryly, nervously. He felt the urge to look away from her, to look to the ground and advert his eyes; but he knew she would not see, and he could not look away.