Eye of the Oracle Read online

  Her stomach grumbled. “Quiet,” she scolded. “There’s nothing in there for you to eat, unless you’re hungry for ground-up worm guts.” Her stomach churned again. “Yeah, I know. Our dinner won’t be much better.”

  When she arrived at the growth chamber, her spawn grinned. Mara jumped up to the hearth. “Are you happy to see me?” She opened the jar and angled it toward the plant. “I have something new for you. I’m going to teach you to eat through your mouth!” She dipped her finger into the wet, loamy goop and smeared a dab across the spawn’s tiny lips. The little plant moved his mouth, allowing a narrow slit to open, and Mara pushed a morsel of food in. The spawn’s thin smile widened as it smacked its lips together.

  Mara laughed. “This is going to be easy! You have to be the smartest spawn ever!”

  When she finished the feeding, she caressed his green cheek. “Good night,” she whispered. The spawn’s lips stretched into a yawn, his eyelets fluttered, and he seemed to drift into sleep.

  Mara kissed the top of his pod, then dashed out of the growth chamber. She bolted through the corridor and into the elevation shaft, grabbing a cudgel from the shaft’s platform floor. After rapping on a metal plate that hung from the wall, she shouted into a tube that ran down the shaft. “Chazaq! It’s Mara. I need to go down three levels.”

  The platform eased downward. As the descent paused intermittently, Mara imagined the huge giant at the bottom letting the rope slide through his massive hands, grabbing it every few seconds to keep her from plummeting all the way to the brick-making kilns, a forbidden zone for all the girls.

  Sulfur fumes assaulted her nose, intensifying by the second. When she reached the third quarry level, she jumped out and swiveled her head. A glow from the nearby magma river illuminated the enormous cavern, but it flowed behind a granite wall, safely away from her sensitive eyes.

  “Paili!” she called. “Are you down here?” Three girls walked by, each carrying a bucket of wet rocks, but only one turned to look at Mara. With her glazed eyes and dirty chin and sweat dripping from her stringy hair, she seemed more dead than alive.

  Mara pulled her coif from her pocket and mopped her brow. The heat was more oppressive than usual. “Paili!” she called again, tying her coif and stuffing her hair underneath. “Has anyone seen Paili?”

  One girl poked her reddish head out from behind a stone column. “Washing.” She formed her words carefully. “Paili . . . is . . . washing.”

  Mara knelt and untied a cloth from the girl’s ankle. “Taalah, hold still while I have a look at that cut.” The girl’s leg trembled, but Mara held it firm as she eyed a finger-length gash. “It’s still oozing blood, but I think it’s healing.” She reconfigured the cloth to place a clean spot on the wound and tied it securely. “Make sure you soak your ankle in the sulfur springs tonight and wash out the bandage.”

  Taalah nodded and pointed. “Paili . . . come . . . now.”

  Mara rose to her feet. Down in the quarry, a little girl skipped along a stony path that ran between a pair of shallow trenches, clutching the sides of her too-long inner shirt as she bounced toward them.

  Mara waved at her. “Paili!”

  The little girl glanced up and spread out her arms. “Mara!” She ran across a narrow rock bridge that spanned the closer trench and lunged into Mara’s arms. “You back!” she cried, nuzzling Mara’s waist.

  Mara laid a hand on Paili’s dark wet hair. “Were you playing in the water?”

  Paili shook her head, but when Mara glared at her, her head’s back and forth motion slowly changed to up and down.

  “Where’s your over-tunic?”

  Paili pointed at the closer trench.

  Mara groaned. “Oh, Paili! What am I going to do with you? It’s a good thing Nabal didn’t see you.” She glanced around the cavern. “Where is he, anyway?”

  Paili stomped once on the ground. “Brick room. He . . . back soon.”

  Mara fished in Paili’s pocket and jerked out her coif. “He’s going to catch you someday, and you’ll be chiseling out growth chambers until you wrinkle up and die!” She tied the coif back on Paili’s head and gestured toward the trench. “Come on. Let’s dig up some magnetite.”

  She slid down the short slope and grabbed up the dirty, wrinkled tunic. When Paili joined her, Mara pushed the girl’s outer garment over her head and tried to smooth it out, but her hand touched a sticky spot on Paili’s collar. She drew her fingers close to her eyes. “Blood?” She spun Paili around, pulled her collar away from her neck, and peeked down her back. She gritted her teeth and growled. “Did Nabal do this? Did he whip you?”

  Paili nodded, whimpering.

  “And he told you to wash the blood to hide it, right?”

  Paili nodded again.

  Mara released Paili’s collar and kissed her cheek. Tightening both her fists, she hissed, “Someday I’m going to kill that stupid dung-eater.” She snatched up a nearby bucket and glanced at the few small pebbles covering the bottom. “Was he mad because you’re behind on your quota?”

  “No . . . find,” Paili said, turning up her palms. “All gone.”

  Mara dug through Paili’s pocket. “Where’s your locater?”

  Paili tucked her hair under her coif. “It . . . not work.”

  “Here it is.” Mara pulled out a glass disk and laid it in her palm, gently swirling the metal filings inside. “It seems all right to me.” She took Paili’s hand. “Come on. Let’s find the biggest strike ever. Maybe Naamah will give us a fig cake with dinner.”

  Paili grinned. “Fig cakes!”

  Mara eyed the disk while slogging along the trench. As they passed by a trio of laborers digging into the slope, her leg brushed against a kneeling girl and knocked her into a pile of soot. “Oops!” Mara reached down to help the girl up. “I’m sorry!”

  The other girl straightened and slapped Mara’s cheek. “You are bad!” she said, pushing her finger into Mara’s chest. “Acacia was good!”

  Rage boiled, sending a surge of stinging heat through Mara’s wounded cheek. “Qadar!” she growled, raising a fist, but when Qadar covered her face with trembling hands, Mara let her arm flop to the side. She turned and strode farther down the trench. “Come on, Paili. Let’s go to the new dig area. I doubt anyone’s gone there yet.”

  As she marched on, Paili’s gentle hum lilting behind her, the trench sank into a darker region of the cavern. The air grew cold, and the light faded, almost too dim to continue, but as they rounded a curve, new light poured through tiny holes in the floor up ahead. She stooped and signaled for Paili to join her.

  The little girl huddled against her side. “Cold!”

  “Stay close to me.” Mara hugged Paili and pointed at the holes. “I thought the light meant that the magma river flowed right under us. I guess it doesn’t, or it’d be a lot warmer in here.” She tapped on the rocks and listened. “Sounds solid enough.”

  Paili wrapped both arms around Mara’s waist. “Go back. . . . I scared.”

  “It’s okay.” Mara pushed on the ground with her free hand. The rocky layer bent downward, and small cracks etched jagged streaks in every direction. “Hmmm . . . Maybe it’s not so solid after all.” Grunting under the Paili-sized load, Mara pivoted on her knees and headed back. “I think we’d better ”

  Suddenly the floor crumbled away. “Whoooaaa!” Mara slid into a gaping hole with Paili still latched to her waist. Mara clawed at the sloping sides until her fingers snagged something solid, keeping her from sliding any farther. Pain rifled through her arms as she and Paili dangled over a seemingly bottomless pit.

  “Paili!” she screamed. “Hang on!”

  Chapter 7

  The Abyss

  Paili’s arms tightened around Mara’s waist, nearly squeezing her breath away. Grunting and pulling, Mara inched higher. Ignoring her throbbing shoulder, she lunged upward, and her fingers groped for a new handhold until they finally found a sturdy ridge. As she dr
agged their bodies higher, streams of light flowed past her eyes like windblown fog, filtering into the slope and disappearing. Sounds of snapping arose from below, like hungry crocodiles vaulting to catch hold of her feet. Mara lunged again and caught the upper lip of the pit with one hand, then the other.

  “Paili! Climb out!”

  Paili clambered up Mara’s back and jumped from her shoulders to solid ground. Dropping to her knees, she grabbed Mara behind her upper arms and pulled much harder than seemed possible for a little girl. Mara dug her feet into the slope and scrambled to safety, then rolled to the ground, puffing.

  Paili laid a hand on Mara’s cheek. “You okay?”

  Mara rubbed her aching shoulder. “I think I’m okay.” She sat up and looked her in the eye. “What about you?”

  “I . . . bleeding again.”

  Mara scanned her body. “Where?”

  Paili showed her a cut on her elbow. “Here.”

  Mara eyed it closely. “It’s not too bad.” She looked over Paili’s shoulder at the pit a mere two steps away. She pushed Paili gently to the side and crawled slowly to the edge.

  The ground near the pit seemed sturdy now, so she inched close and peered into the hole. Streams of light rose and fell as if something down below inhaled and exhaled radiant energy. With each rhythmic pulse, some of the light disappeared into spots on the wall, sucked in by some kind of mysterious force.

  Mara slid her fingers down the side and touched one of the spots. It felt smooth and hard, like a polished stone. While probing the surface, she caught the edge, and the stone shifted. Another stream of light flowed up, weaved between her fingers, and disappeared into the stone. She pried it loose and laid it in her palm. Fitting snugly between the heel of her hand and the base of her fingers, a multifaceted jewel glittered at her, a faint beam of light emanating from one side.

  Paili touched it with her fingertip. “Pretty!”

  Mara closed her fist. “Yes, but what is it?”

  Paili shrugged her shoulders. As Mara rose to her feet, a low moan drifted up from the pit. Both girls jumped back, clutching each other. A new chill ran across Mara’s skin, and she inched farther away.

  Paili hung on to her elbow, shivering, while Mara stroked her hair. “I think we’ll look for magnetite somewhere else, okay?”

  “Far . . . away.”

  After several more steps backwards, Mara turned and held Paili’s hand. “If we tell Morgan about the pit and the gem, maybe we won’t have to make quota today.”

  “Fig cakes?” Paili asked.

  Mara strode forward, peering through the dimness. “Let’s not push it. I’m just hoping we don’t get whipped.”

  Mara and Paili slid into the warm spring, each girl finding a place to sit so that the soothing water covered her dirty, scraped shoulders.

  With a flickering lantern at her feet, Morgan sat on a rocky ledge next to the pool, holding the gem in her fingers and examining it carefully. “A deep pit, you say? How deep?”

  Mara reached for her outer tunic and pulled it into the bath with her. “I couldn’t see the bottom.” She scrubbed her tunic in the bubbling water. “It was strange,” she said, looking up at Morgan. “Light streamed up and down, and some of it got sucked into that gem.”

  “Very interesting.” Morgan drew the gem up to her eyes. “Did you notice anything else?”

  “I did.” Mara turned to Paili and examined the whip marks on her back. “Oh, Paili! How could Nabal be so cruel to a little girl?” She squeezed water from a sponge, gently sprinkling the wounds as she looked up again at Morgan. “Did you see this?”

  Morgan pressed her lips together and nodded. “Nabal will be terminated. We have a new giant ready to replace him actually a third giant we will call Nabal.”

  “A third Nabal?”

  “I’m afraid so. The first one died the night after he whipped you. But they are identical, so I fear the new one will be just as stupid as the first two. Still, if I show him the remains of his predecessor, perhaps he will not be as cruel.”

  “Wow! I didn’t even realize you switched them.” Mara shivered, but it was a comforting shiver. “Anyway, we did notice something else, a horrible moaning sound, like someone down in the pit was terribly sad, like maybe he was lost.”

  Morgan clenched the gem so tightly her knuckles turned white, but her voice remained calm. “Did it speak any words you could understand?”

  Mara shook her head. “We didn’t stay long. It was pretty scary.”

  “I quite understand.” Morgan nodded toward the tunnel that led to their sleeping quarters and held up the corners of two large cloths. “Here’s a sheet for each of you. After you wash out your clothes, hang them in the breezeway and go straight to bed. Naamah will bring dinner to you later.”

  Paili clapped her hands. “Fig cakes!”

  Morgan knelt by the pool and laid her palm on Mara’s head, her voice so soft it was almost drowned by the bubbling spring. “Take care not to tell Mardon about the pit. I know how important Paili is to you” her eyes turned fiery red “and how important Acacia was to you.”

  Raising a lantern to light the way, Mara led Paili back to their hovel, a chest-high dugout in the stone wall. With her free hand clinging to her wrapped sheet, she ducked low and climbed down into their sanctum. Although their little sand-stuffed mats were no thicker than a finger, when Mara tucked herself into her individual cleft in the rock, she always felt cozy, far removed from stupid giants and their stinging whips, glad to forget about mining magnetite in stifling heat, at least for the night.

  She lay on her mat and tucked her sheet around her body. “Are you warm, Paili?”

  “No,” came the voice from the other cleft. “Hungry.”

  “It shouldn’t be long. Morgan promised ”

  “Time to eat,” a sweet voice called from the corridor. “I hear someone wanted fig cakes.” Naamah squeezed into the hovel and handed each girl a bread bowl filled with orange mash. A brown fig cake floated on top like a hunk of granite bobbing in a magma river.

  “Enjoy the treat,” Naamah sang as she left the hovel.

  Mara picked up her cake and let the mash drip from its edge. Naamah had never prepared appetizing meals, but this was better than nothing and more appetizing than a lot of the gunk they had eaten lately.

  After several minutes of quiet chewing, Mara pinched the last bite of her bread bowl and threw it toward a fist-sized hole in the wall at the back side of their dugout. “Don’t forget to save a piece for Qatan!” she called.

  Paili mumbled through her mouthful of food. “He not hungry.”

  “Come on, Paili. Even a mouse needs to eat.”

  Paili swallowed and sang out, “Story now!”

  Mara drooped her shoulders. “Oh, Paili, I’m so tired tonight, I don’t think I can ” Mara suddenly lifted her head. “Do you hear that humming?”

  “Naamah,” Paili said.

  “Whew! Her timing is perfect again.”

  Their petite mistress crawled down into the dugout with layers of clothes draped over her arm. “They’re dry,” she said, handing each of them their inner and outer garments.

  Mara slipped on her inner tunic and folded her outer dress into a pillow.

  “Would you girls like a song tonight?” Naamah asked.

  “Song!” Paili chirped.

  Mara searched Naamah’s eyes. What could be the reason for such a rare treat? “Sure. Why not?”

  Naamah patted Mara’s folded dress. “Lie down, and I will sing you to sleep.”

  Mara laid her head on her dress and closed her eyes, letting her mind relax. She might as well enjoy the song instead of questioning Naamah’s sincerity. With all the new happenings of the day, she needed something to help her unwind, and she wanted to be well rested for her new job in the morning.

  Naamah’s smooth contralto crooned in Mara’s ears.

  Alone in caves through darkest nights,


  A bitter girl is mining ore,

  With pick and bucket gathering rocks,

  Confined to chains forevermore.

  No life, no love, no mother’s arms,

  Forever empty you will yearn.

  The friends you love will fade to ash,

  And you will see them fall and burn.

  These caverns held the judging flow

  Where floods awaited God’s command

  To spring into the worlds above

  And drown the souls who dared to stand.

  So now these caves are empty tombs

  For hopeless slaves who chisel stones;

  Far worse than death as on their knees

  These ghosts unearth their sisters’ bones.

  Relinquish now all hope for grace,

  For grace and mercy spew their scorn

  At girls who live and die in caves

  And those who dwell as underborns.

  Naamah repeated the verses, each one filling Mara with sorrow. She couldn’t protest. Every word was true. There really was no hope, and her only real friend was gone forever. Grace didn’t exist. Mercy and hope were merely words in Mardon’s dictionary, flat and lifeless.

  As the lyrics passed through Mara’s mind a third time, the song faded into oblivion, replaced by a fuzzy, dream-like voice. She knew she had begun dreaming, but as the dream progressed, it grew so real, she lost all consciousness of anything but the image before her.

  “We’d better go,” Acacia said. “If Morgan finds us, we’re goners.”

  Mara stuffed a small loaf of bread into her pocket and handed one to Acacia. “I’m not leaving without enough food. Paili won’t get her rations if she doesn’t come to the dining chamber.”

  Acacia held out the loaf. “She can’t eat this much.”

  “Who knows how long she’ll be sick?” Mara pushed the loaf into Acacia’s pocket. “I can’t risk coming back to get more.”