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“Let Him that Speaketh Fate to Men Have No Fate of His Own” by Rob MacWolf (part 1 of 2, read by William Dingo)
In the late bronze age, on a small island, there dwells an oracle. But fate has brought to him an unexpected guest, the Pirate King Ouanaxes.
Today’s story is the first of two parts of “Let Him that Speaketh Fate to Men Have No Fate of His Own” by Rob MacWolf, winner of a LEO Literary Award for best short story, from the award winning anthology When the World Was Young by the Furry Historical Fiction Society. Be sure to look for his work in the next volumes, also available from the FHFS.
Read by William Dingo, the Sunrise Spectator.
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https://thevoice.dog/episode/let-him-that-speaketh-fate-to-men-have-no-fate-of-his-own-by-rob-macwolf-part-1-of-2
Transcript
You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.
Speaker:Today’s story is the first of two parts of “Let
Speaker:Him that Speaketh Fate to Men Have No Fate of His Own” by Rob MacWolf, winner of a LEO Literary Award for best short story,
Speaker:from the award winning anthology
Speaker:When the World Was Young
Speaker:by the Furry Historical Fiction Society.
Speaker:Be sure to look for his work in the next volumes,
Speaker:also available from the FHFS.
Speaker:Read by William Dingo,
Speaker:the Sunrise Spectator.
Speaker:Please enjoy“Let Him that Speaketh Fate to Men Have No Fate of His Own”
Speaker:by Rob MacWolf, Part 1
Speaker:of 2 The Isle of Ocrit
Speaker:was not a mighty power.
Speaker:No great battles had been fought there.
Speaker:No tales were told of it.
Speaker:No riches were to be found there.
Speaker:It would be a half-century or so yet,
Speaker:ere the cultivation of grapes would make its slow migration from the mountains beyond the east horizon,
Speaker:so it had no vineyards.
Speaker:It would be more than a dozen centuries
Speaker:before the great empires rose and matured enough
Speaker:to crave silphium,
Speaker:so it remained only a pale yellow flower in the woods
Speaker:and a savory tang in meat broth.
Speaker:Anyway, Ocrit did not have so very much silphium, either.
Speaker:What Ocrit had
Speaker:was a true and genuine Oracle.
Speaker:And a true and genuine Oracle,
Speaker:even if it were not so famous or prestigious as the Cybeles of Delphi
Speaker:or Iliun or Cumae would one day be,
Speaker:was worth a journey.
Speaker:Let us imagine some tyrant, brooding on next season’s harvest of conquest.
Speaker:Or perhaps an heiress,
Speaker:seeking an interpretation of a troubling dream.
Speaker:Or an oratorical nobleman,
Speaker:seeking an advantageous marriage for his favorite nephew.
Speaker:They would come to the small harbor,
Speaker:make their way up the winding path through the sighing cedars.
Speaker:They would begin to question,
Speaker:more than once, if they had lost their path,
Speaker:only to soon see, ahead in the dim forest,
Speaker:an oil lamp guttering in the constant cool sea wind.
Speaker:They would hear ahead in the darkness of night
Speaker:—for the Oracle would speak to none unless the moon were overhead
Speaker:—something wild and dark
Speaker:played on a haunting pipe,
Speaker:invisible beyond the trees.
Speaker:And just when they would consider going back
Speaker:—surely a seasoned war leader
Speaker:can make do without prophecies,
Speaker:surely a village wise woman can interpret a dream,
Speaker:surely one’s dear nephew can find his own way into a marriage bed
Speaker:—the trees would open up,
Speaker:and the sky would reappear.
Speaker:On the left hand would be goat-grazed cliffs
Speaker:down to the lights of town and harbor,
Speaker:where the sailors who had brought them here
Speaker:sat in the taverns in the company of that most enviable of lovers:
Speaker:a full belly, plenty of beer,
Speaker:and a warm fireside.
Speaker:But on the right hand would be the sanctuary.
Speaker:I have heard it claimed it was a lightless palace of obsidian columns,
Speaker:where chthonic vapors from the underworld took the shapes of shades of the dead and vengeful spirits.
Speaker:But I would not believe such things.
Speaker:Obsidian makes poor columns.
Speaker:And what vapors there were
Speaker:would have come from the braziers,
Speaker:not the underworld.
Speaker:Such things are for oracles as they are imagined,
Speaker:not as they are—or were,
Speaker:rather, I know of none today.
Speaker:More likely it was like any other shrine to a little god among the little islands
Speaker:in those little days,
Speaker:magnified to terrifying
Speaker:and august by the darkness of the hour
Speaker:and the loneliness of the journey.
Speaker:Now follow our hypothetical pilgrims in.
Speaker:See them startle
Speaker:as a masked acolyte steps forth from the shadows.
Speaker:The warrior blusters, perhaps,
Speaker:and the heiress pouts,
Speaker:but they are told to enter
Speaker:of their own free will,
Speaker:to speak only once,
Speaker:and that only to ask the question they have brought.
Speaker:Then in through black curtains,
Speaker:to an inner chamber.
Speaker:The only light, the moon through a single high window
Speaker:and the smoldering of something sharp-smelling and smothering in the braziers all about the room.
Speaker:Perhaps the orator is curious,
Speaker:steps near to examine one of them,
Speaker:and staggers back at a sharp word from a masked acolyte.
Speaker:The same one who led him in?
Speaker:Ah, impossible to say!
Speaker:They are all about the room he now can see,
Speaker:and all hooded and cloaked the same.
Speaker:And something in the brazier’s made him lightheaded.
Speaker:Best to be done with this unworldy business and away.
Speaker:So they speak. They ask,
Speaker:“Shall I see victory when I lay siege to the clan of the northwest?”
Speaker:says the eagle. “I dreamed that my grandmother,
Speaker:dead these thirteen years now,
Speaker:pierced me through the heart with a spindle,
Speaker:and left me hanging in the fig tree.
Speaker:What does it mean?” says the goat.
Speaker:“Young Tammuz is of a marrying age,
Speaker:will he make an advantageous match?”
Speaker:says the stag. And then they wait,
Speaker:nervous, while their question rolls away into the close heavy darkness.
Speaker:They cannot even see who it is they are asking.
Speaker:Until they can. Across the room,
Speaker:hunched over one of the smoldering braziers,
Speaker:smoke and darkness wreathed about their head
Speaker:—and a fearsome head it was indeed
Speaker:—Behold! The oracle would turn toward them ominously
Speaker:just after they were noticed
Speaker:—and how it was the oracle
Speaker:knew when to turn,
Speaker:when to stay statue still,
Speaker:who can say—rise to an impossible height,
Speaker:and stand in the shaft of moonlight.
Speaker:A great mask, some primeval and forgotten monster of a bird,
Speaker:cruel bulwark of a beak
Speaker:and imperious eyes,
Speaker:like a vulture god
Speaker:risen from the underworld. It would stare, yet how could it stare, with eyes of blank stone? Yet not a one, of all the years of pilgrims, had not felt the weight of the oracle’s regard as surely as they felt their own breathing.
Speaker:And when the tension was just a hair
Speaker:from becoming unbearable,
Speaker:the oracle would speak:
Speaker:Thou would be conqueror,
Speaker:thy snows fall red.
Speaker:The oldest mountains turn their backs on thee.
Speaker:The serpent shall lie burning in thy bed
Speaker:Ere you return to set it laughing free.
Speaker:Or, Go ask the spindle what the fig tree means.
Speaker:Go ask the beehives what the spindle spake.
Speaker:Go seek for thirteen months of sleep and find
Speaker:The spindle cracks,
Speaker:and all the skeins unwind.
Speaker:Thy grandmother has left her shawl behind
Speaker:And somebody must wear it
Speaker:to the wake. Or perhaps,
Speaker:The golden apple,
Speaker:lovely to behold.
Speaker:But green is sweeter
Speaker:on the tongue than gold.
Speaker:And that would be that.
Speaker:And then an acolyte
Speaker:—did it matter if it was the same one?
Speaker:—would usher them out again,
Speaker:to ponder on what it could have meant
Speaker:—the eagle sullenly
Speaker:over a now-less-likely campaign,
Speaker:the goat pensive
Speaker:as if picturing herself in her grandmother’s place at the table,
Speaker:the stag uneasy and now less sure if that favorite nephew
Speaker:really is his favorite after all.
Speaker:Perhaps, for an additional alms, beyond what they had given to be admitted?
Speaker:Ah, but of course,
Speaker:the acolyte would confess,
Speaker:the deep meaning of the oracle’s wisdom
Speaker:could be explained,
Speaker:with initiation and familiarity,
Speaker:perhaps on the way down the path to the village,
Speaker:for it is dark now indeed…
Speaker:And that was how the art of an Oracle was practiced, in those days.
Speaker:Historians today, I suppose,
Speaker:would shrug, would say it was some drug,
Speaker:to induce trance in a practitioner who would then believe themselves possessed by Apollo
Speaker:—or at least something close enough
Speaker:it might as well be called ‘Apollo’ in the history books
Speaker:—and deliver whatever pronouncements bubbled up in their brain.
Speaker:And they would not be wrong about this,
Speaker:in the way a man who calls a fresco only plaster and paint,
Speaker:who says a mosaic is only a great many fragments of broken glass,
Speaker:who says a sacrificial cake is only corn and honey and fat,
Speaker:much as one eats every day,
Speaker:so what is the difference really,
Speaker:is not strictly speaking
Speaker:wrong. But what the historians do not,
Speaker:could not know, is that after our pilgrims left,
Speaker:and the doors were locked for the night,
Speaker:the oracle would fumble his way out the back.
Speaker:Would slip off the trailing androgynous robes,
Speaker:pull off the top-heavy bird mask,
Speaker:and take deep breaths of clean clear air
Speaker:until there was no oracle there at all.
Speaker:Only a young dog called Talzu
Speaker:—brindle coat, darkened to an ash-brown mask around his face
Speaker:—naked and shivering till he staggered exhausted
Speaker:into the bed in his little hut,
Speaker:hidden behind the oracle’s sanctuary.
Speaker:Talzu remembered very little before his life on Ocrit Isle.
Speaker:And that which he did remember,
Speaker:he held of no consequence.
Speaker:His mother—perhaps as oracle he could have said where she was now if he cared to,
Speaker:but he did not—had seen some signs in him.
Speaker:Perhaps she had a touch of foresight herself,
Speaker:perhaps there was some omen or augury,
Speaker:perhaps she saw he showed no fondness for girls at the age it was to be looked for,
Speaker:and any oldwife will tell you that means a man’s path in life
Speaker:leads to the mysteries of the half-world.
Speaker:Perhaps she merely needed to rid her house of another mouth to feed.
Speaker:Whyever it was done,
Speaker:Talzu had been sent to the nearest oracle
Speaker:—for ‘nearest’ was the oracle of Ocrit Isle’s most notable quality
Speaker:—in the midst of his tenth summer.
Speaker:He had served as an acolyte.
Speaker:He had lit the lanterns in the woods,
Speaker:he had played the haunting pipe in a hidden alcove,
Speaker:and had never thought to go farther.
Speaker:Most did not. But he did.
Speaker:And when he did, his life truly began.
Speaker:“You are dwelling on the past again,”
Speaker:Histuman would have said,
Speaker:had he been there.
Speaker:Talzu walked among the cedars on the upper slopes,
Speaker:down the path the orator,
Speaker:the heiress, the general would have trod last night.
Speaker:It was late morning,
Speaker:and in the light of the sun
Speaker:the woods were less aweful and numinous.
Speaker:Working at night meant he could sleep as late as he liked,
Speaker:do whatever he liked in the day.
Speaker:Some of the acolytes, he supposed,
Speaker:expected him to remain in his room.
Speaker:Perhaps he would have,
Speaker:were he a grander oracle,
Speaker:if anyone cared to pry after his secrets,
Speaker:if there were luxuries for him to send acolytes to fetch.
Speaker:But on Ocrit Isle
Speaker:the only luxury to be had
Speaker:was freedom, so it was what he took,
Speaker:when he could. “You could have more,” Histuman
Speaker:would have said.
Speaker:“Those who come for what we do,
Speaker:they pay well.” “You’re chatty today,” Talzu muttered and picked up the pace toward
Speaker:the market.
Speaker:“You could send an acolyte to the market for you,”
Speaker:Histuman would have maintained,
Speaker:“as you used to go for me.
Speaker:You could send a ship to fetch you fine linens and rich spices.”
Speaker:“There is none,” Talzu navigated the stepping stones
Speaker:across the gully where,
Speaker:during the spring rains,
Speaker:there would flow a busy creek.
Speaker:“Who could bring aught I want.”
Speaker:To that, Histuman would have had no answer.
Speaker:If Talzu gets to dwell on the past,
Speaker:tis only fair we do as well.
Speaker:So let us look back at Talzu the acolyte,
Speaker:when he has been tending the pomegranates in the side garden,
Speaker:where pilgrims were led if they were too overcome with fear
Speaker:or sorrow on hearing their prophecy.
Speaker:It did not see much use,
Speaker:and the pomegranate bushes
Speaker:never set fruit for they did not grow well on this side of the mountain,
Speaker:but there was little else to do to keep busy
Speaker:until the next pilgrim arrived.
Speaker:But when the step of a bare foot sounded on the wind-worn stone behind him,
Speaker:Talzu straightened and froze.
Speaker:“Somehow,” the voice of a wolf,
Speaker:dried to gravel with irony, had said,
Speaker:“you knew I was no pilgrim,
Speaker:eh lad?” Had Talzu not already straightened and froze,
Speaker:he would have done so again.
Speaker:Histuman the Oracle
Speaker:sat himself on the stone bench
Speaker:just beside one of his sworn-silent acolytes,
Speaker:the only ones to know his identity,
Speaker:and looked Talzu up and down
Speaker:like a farmer considering whether to buy a prize bull at market.
Speaker:“What would you have of me?”
Speaker:Talzu had said. It was forbidden for him to kneel,
Speaker:or use any titles of reverence,
Speaker:for that might reveal who it was to whom he spoke.
Speaker:But he could not wholly keep a tremble of fear from his voice.
Speaker:“Much, boy, I fear very much indeed,”
Speaker:the old wolf chuckled.
Speaker:“How many years do you wear?”
Speaker:“This coming harvest will be my nineteenth.”
Speaker:“And in all that time,”
Speaker:Histuman’s eyes strayed to the sunset over the edge of the sea,
Speaker:“have you yearned to leave this island?
Speaker:Forsake my service and secrets?
Speaker:Go out, see the world,
Speaker:and win glory in it, eh?”
Speaker:The dog shrugged.
Speaker:“I know of nowhere I would go.”
Speaker:If Histuman were disappointed at that,
Speaker:he showed it not.
Speaker:“And there is no woman whose favors you seek?”
Speaker:“I… no, I don’t…” Talzu blurted.
Speaker:“No ruddy maiden at the market?
Speaker:No plump matron? No prosperous widow?”
Speaker:Talzu had felt a growl rise in his throat.
Speaker:“I have never lain with a woman,
Speaker:if that’s what you mean.”
Speaker:“But you have,” Histuman glanced at the young dog slyly,
Speaker:“disported between Kuruhdu’s knees of a night,
Speaker:when the two of you were on vigil together.
Speaker:Aye, and warmed his bed of a morning
Speaker:after long sleepless watch.”
Speaker:Talzu’s breath had caught in his throat.
Speaker:But then… this old wolf tormenting him was Oracle,
Speaker:was he not? What man could have secrets from him?
Speaker:“You will not have long to love him.
Speaker:Within a moon, a trading ship will come by,
Speaker:unexpectedly, bearing a hired blade
Speaker:who hails from the far Cimmerians.
Speaker:A great sabrecat of a woman,
Speaker:and Kuruhdu will be so enamored of her,
Speaker:though she will be twice his height,
Speaker:that he will seek release from his vows and my service.
Speaker:Which I will give him, of course,
Speaker:why not? He will sail away with her,
Speaker:and that will be the last we ever see of him.
Speaker:Now, when you went to the market, a morning ere last,”
Speaker:Histuamn had been suddenly done with that line of discourse,
Speaker:“You brought back chick peas,
Speaker:leek, beets, and a good bit of lamb.”
Speaker:Talzu had nodded,
Speaker:confused. The wolf had tossed all of these into a stew
Speaker:—and Histuman almost never cooked himself
Speaker:—with a good helping of barley to make it go round,
Speaker:and it had been a very fine meal indeed for the oracle and his four acolytes.
Speaker:“How did you know,”
Speaker:Histuman had pressed him,
Speaker:“to bring back the makings of the equinox stew
Speaker:my mother used to make,
Speaker:when I was yet a boy among the cities of the plain?
Speaker:Which I have not
Speaker:tasted since?” “I…” Talzu had had no idea what Histuman was talking about.
Speaker:“I did not.” “Oh, was there nothing else to be had in the market that day?”
Speaker:“No, there was…” the dog had wracked his mind to remember,
Speaker:“there were pears
Speaker:and salt cheese and tunny fish…”
Speaker:“And why is it, boy,”
Speaker:the wolf had interrupted,
Speaker:had risen to his feet,
Speaker:had suddenly and softly stroked Talzu’s cheek with the back of his hand,
Speaker:“that I have never once heard you speak a lie?”
Speaker:The memory of that still put cold fingers between Talzu’s shoulderblades.
Speaker:“You know the answer to your own questions.”
Speaker:Talzu had said. Had been unsure if he were begging an answer,
Speaker:or making an accusation.
Speaker:“An oracle who knows his business,”
Speaker:Histuman had answered,
Speaker:“rarely asks a question
Speaker:to which he does not know the answer.”
Speaker:And that had been the day Talzu
Speaker:had been no more acolyte,
Speaker:but apprentice. Every moment, waking and sleeping,
Speaker:he had spent with the old wolf.
Speaker:Learning not just signs and omens,
Speaker:in the stars, in the clouds,
Speaker:in the patterns the curls of smoke from the sanctuary braziers
Speaker:wrote on the air,
Speaker:but how to stand amid them
Speaker:and see the whole story they told
Speaker:as a woodwise hunter may stand amid trees
Speaker:and understand the whole forest.
Speaker:Learning not just the rites, but the multitude of meanings behind the rites,
Speaker:how they meant the moon journeying to the underworld
Speaker:and returning with its secrets,
Speaker:but also meant the man hung living
Speaker:on a sacred tree as sacrifice from whose heart’s blood
Speaker:all harvests sprang,
Speaker:but also meant the unnamable watchers
Speaker:who stand motionless and stern at the gates of death
Speaker:in the uttermost west
Speaker:keeping secrets no mortal mind could know
Speaker:and live. Learning,
Speaker:aye, but also practicing.
Speaker:Tasting with his breath the bitter secret mix of incense
Speaker:and oily seeds and sacred herbs
Speaker:burned in the braziers
Speaker:and fighting to keep his head steady amid the warm
Speaker:and weightless rapids that would then swell within his ears as he held that
Speaker:fume-filled breath,
Speaker:a little longer each time.
Speaker:Memorizing whatever verse the sanctuary could remember,
Speaker:much of it nonsense,
Speaker:and then changing it,
Speaker:a word at a time,
Speaker:so that nothing remained but the rhythm and rhyme,
Speaker:that whatever visions might come,
Speaker:his tongue would have the agility to tessellate into verse on the spot.
Speaker:Balancing the heavy mask,
Speaker:until he could sit with it,
Speaker:stand with it, turn with it
Speaker:as if it were his true face.
Speaker:By the time the ship had come,
Speaker:just as Histuman had said it would,
Speaker:and Kuruhdu had disappeared to sea with his saber-mawed warrior,
Speaker:just as Histuman had said he would,
Speaker:Talzu had begun
Speaker:to see. Or rather,
Speaker:had begun to realize he had been seeing,
Speaker:all along. How the present burned down the future like the wick of a lamp,
Speaker:fixing it into the past even as it consumed it.
Speaker:He understood, though he couldn’t have put it into words,
Speaker:how the old wolf did what he did,
Speaker:and therefore, he supposed,
Speaker:how the young dog did also
Speaker:what they did. He began to know the answers to questions before he asked them,
Speaker:once he had learned to ask them
Speaker:the right way round.
Speaker:And when he awoke just before dawn,
Speaker:with Histuman’s arms around him,
Speaker:with the old wolf’s taste on his breath,
Speaker:with the oracle’s kiss on his forehead,
Speaker:Talzu would feel the future rolling towards him,
Speaker:clearer every day,
Speaker:like a great island-swallowing tide.
Speaker:But now, of course,
Speaker:that future had dwindled to mere present.
Speaker:Histuman had been among the things its tide had swept away,
Speaker:and Talzu had taken his place as oracle,
Speaker:just as foreseen.
Speaker:And who was to know the difference?
Speaker:The other acolytes were just as sworn to secrecy as ever,
Speaker:and anyway by now
Speaker:they had been all replaced.
Speaker:Arikimra, now keeper of the island’s smaller tavern,
Speaker:was the only one still to dwell on Ocrit Isle,
Speaker:and he had been released from his vows
Speaker:while Histuman yet lived.
Speaker:As far as he, or anyone else on the isle could say,
Speaker:Talzu was just another of the acolytes.
Speaker:“You miss me,” Histuman would have said,
Speaker:as Talzu approached the buildings clustered about the harbor,
Speaker:“more than usual.” “So what if I do?”
Speaker:Talzu returned an idle salute
Speaker:from a sow driving a herd of goats toward the upper pastures.
Speaker:She had no idea to whom it was she offered an upraised hoof in casual greeting.
Speaker:Two moons ago he had told her that either her next child would be stillborn,
Speaker:or the birthing of it would cost her life,
Speaker:and now rumor said she had put off her husband,
Speaker:he had gone, with great bitterness,
Speaker:to be a fisherman with his brother
Speaker:on the next island southward.
Speaker:“You know very well,”
Speaker:the old wolf’s voice would have been peevish,
Speaker:but he would have nuzzled the young dog’s ears as he spoke,
Speaker:“what. Find yourself a distraction.
Speaker:A cheese dumpling
Speaker:or a bowl of beer
Speaker:or a handsome fellow,
Speaker:well, handsome enough, here.”
Speaker:“All the same distractions,”
Speaker:Talzu shook his head,
Speaker:“as have distracted me less and less
Speaker:with each passing of winter.
Speaker:You know what it is to grow old,
Speaker:old man.” “I am glad I did not live,”
Speaker:Histuman would have said,
Speaker:“to hear a mere lad of single score and seven winters
Speaker:call himself ‘old.’”
Speaker:Talzu stopped at the pile of stones at the crossroad
Speaker:—the only crossroad on the island, in truth,
Speaker:worth piling stones at
Speaker:—to add a pious-enough pebble to the windward side.
Speaker:He paused a while there,
Speaker:and before continuing spoke.
Speaker:“A lifetime is a road before us each.
Speaker:The man who sees his road laid plain
Speaker:unto The gates of death,
Speaker:though yet so far away,
Speaker:May call himself an old man,
Speaker:and speak truth.” Talzu stood in silence a while before his feet found the will to walk again.
Speaker:“How long have you been brooding on that one?”
Speaker:Even in death, the former oracle
Speaker:would not have asked a question
Speaker:to which he did not already know the answer.
Speaker:“Long enough,” Talzu whispered.
Speaker:And it may be the old wolf would have taken pity on Talzu,
Speaker:had he been there. It may be his teacher would have appreciated the passive despair he had not meant to teach.
Speaker:It may be that is why he would not have said anything
Speaker:as the dog he’d loved in life walked to the harbor,
Speaker:for it may be he would have known that
Speaker:even an Oracle needs to be surprised from time to time.
Speaker:It may be that is why Talzu had no warning,
Speaker:either natural or unworldly,
Speaker:of the proud ship
Speaker:with the saffron colored sails
Speaker:and the burnished copper prow
Speaker:beached comfortably in the harbor,
Speaker:nor of what twist of destiny it had delivered
Speaker:to the Oracle of Ocrit Isle.
Speaker:You will not have heard,
Speaker:I daresay, of Ouanaxes,
Speaker:whom some called
Speaker:Pirate King. The kingdom of which he was both prince and exile
Speaker:has no name in the remembrances of mortals.
Speaker:He lived too soon for the invention of history.
Speaker:And though epics indeed were sung of him,
Speaker:and tales told, the only one to make its way,
Speaker:limping and exhausted,
Speaker:to these cold latter days is this.
Speaker:Ouanaxes was not such a man
Speaker:as to have any care for whether you
Speaker:and I had heard of him.
Speaker:Imagine him, then,
Speaker:as Talzu first saw him.
Speaker:Begin with a lion,
Speaker:give him all the strength and royalty
Speaker:a lion ought to have,
Speaker:but take from him all concern,
Speaker:and all dignity, for he is free.
Speaker:His silt-brown fur
Speaker:knows well the touch of sunlight,
Speaker:the indistinct pebble-grey stripes are acquainted
Speaker:with the storm-streaked clouds they resemble,
Speaker:the dun mane smells of salt spray.
Speaker:Rather than princely finery,
Speaker:give him a kilt of toughened leather,
Speaker:the kind divided for easy movement,
Speaker:a sash of brightly woven cloth across his chest,
Speaker:and a trusty sword in a worn scabbard,
Speaker:with the hilt of which,
Speaker:just as you catch sight of him,
Speaker:he has gestured some of his men up toward the woods.
Speaker:In his other hand
Speaker:put a bowl of ale,
Speaker:brought out by the tavernkeeper,
Speaker:whom he pays by tugging free one of the dangling golden beads sewn to his sash.
Speaker:It is the most wealth she has ever seen at once, in her life.
Speaker:Then around him picture a whirl of activity,
Speaker:sailors and pirates,
Speaker:fighting beasts all.
Speaker:The ram barters for provisions,
Speaker:the vulture fills jars of fresh water,
Speaker:the ibex seeks carpenters to repair those bits of the ship,
Speaker:the hoopoe seeks smiths
Speaker:to sharpen these spears,
Speaker:or the rats and foxes
Speaker:and seals merely look for a comfortable bed
Speaker:and a willing wench.
Speaker:A chaos of seaborn manhood,
Speaker:at least by the standards of Ocrit Isle,
Speaker:and at its epicenter
Speaker:is Ouanaxes, as if it emanates from him
Speaker:as the philosophers claim the true natures of things emanate from the gods,
Speaker:with heavy sandals undone
Speaker:and bare paws at ease,
Speaker:as if he had no more cares than an innocent shepherd
Speaker:in the golden age of Arcadia.
Speaker:It may be he did not.
Speaker:It took Talzu some time to make his way through the storm of activity
Speaker:to the lion that was its eye.
Speaker:This was good. It gave him time to consider what to say.
Speaker:But he would consider in vain,
Speaker:for the pirate spoke first.
Speaker:“Well met, honored sir.
Speaker:I presume you king of this fair island?”
Speaker:“We have no king here,”
Speaker:Talzu said, cautiously,
Speaker:“in all honesty, we have not folk enough even for a chieftain.”
Speaker:“Why, it’s a thousand pardons I must beg!”
Speaker:Ouanaxes’ eyes sparkled,
Speaker:Talzu would come to know,
Speaker:whenever he grinned like that.
Speaker:“I took you for a king at least,
Speaker:for its myself and you alone
Speaker:who take a breath of leisure amid this bustle. Come then,
Speaker:take that breath with me?
Speaker:If your fair isle has offered my poor band hospitality, why, it’s only fair I offer it back!”
Speaker:And that was a better opening
Speaker:than Talzu guessed he would have been able to plan.
Speaker:“If you but saw us when no pirates had made harbor,”
Speaker:the dog took a seat beside the lion,
Speaker:“you would find little else but leisure here.”
Speaker:“Pirate, you say?” Ouanaxes affected great innocence
Speaker:and drained his bowl of beer.
Speaker:“An islander,” Talzu shrugged,
Speaker:“knows a pirate when they see one.
Speaker:You would not see a hubbub like this for a fisherman!”
Speaker:“I daresay not!” Ouanaxes laughed.
Speaker:“Nay, for a fisherman brings no wealth from the treasure barges.
Speaker:As never a one of them thinks to stop here themselves,
Speaker:we islanders are not like to see any of it save what a pirate comes to spend.”
Speaker:“Ah.” The lion seemed,
Speaker:for the first time,
Speaker:less than perfectly at ease.
Speaker:“You have trade with pira tes often, then?”
Speaker:“Here? Never.” Talzu accepted a bowl of ale from the tavernkeeper,
Speaker:who then gave another to Ouanaxes
Speaker:and bustled away before the dog could pay her.
Speaker:“Other islands, to be sure,
Speaker:but Ocrit is overlooked by all save those who seek the Oracle.”
Speaker:“Oracle?” The lion perked his ears,
Speaker:and oh the sound of his voice was stirring like promise of a journey begun just at dawn.
Speaker:“If you come not seeking the Oracle,
Speaker:you are the first,” Talzu huffed. “In good faith, I heard not there was such a thing until now.” Ouanaxes ran claws through his windblown mane, and oh
Speaker:the roll of dusky fur over the muscles of his bare shoulder
Speaker:was a perilous thing to see. “I saw
Speaker:only an island where an honest captain might rest his crew,
Speaker:patch his hull, and fill his belly.”
Speaker:The dog glanced down the shore
Speaker:at the slender ship beached there.
Speaker:Several oars were broken,
Speaker:and more than a few arrows,
Speaker:hafts snapped off,
Speaker:heads buried, studded the starboard side like the stubble of an old boar’s chin.
Speaker:“How long it will be safe to do that,”
Speaker:Talzu said, very carefully,
Speaker:as he finished his bowl of ale,
Speaker:“may take an Oracle to say.
Speaker:If you will excuse me, captain,
Speaker:I must be about my business.”
Speaker:“Perhaps we two can share drink and speech again?”
Speaker:Ouanaxes stretched to his feet as Talzu rose to go,
Speaker:and oh the possibility of laying upon that fur seemed more comforting than any bed.
Speaker:“If I might ask to know you better,
Speaker:of course.” “They call me Talzu,”
Speaker:the dog said. “Any of the islanders, I trust,
Speaker:can tell you where to find me.”
Speaker:“Then find you I
Speaker:shall,” smiled the lion. And oh,
Speaker:that smile was more intoxicating than the fumes of a dozen oracular braziers.
Speaker:Talzu strode away from the harbor,
Speaker:back toward the heights and his sanctuary.
Speaker:“Are you then in love so quickly as that?”
Speaker:Histuman would have asked,
Speaker:greatly amused. Talzu saw no purpose in replying.
Speaker:An oracle rarely asks a question
Speaker:to which he does not already know the answer.
Speaker:It was a few days yet,
Speaker:ere Ouanaxes visited the oracle.
Speaker:Betimes Talzu met him every day in the market,
Speaker:or the tavern, or the shore.
Speaker:Every day the lion had another task in hand
Speaker:—his men were scouting the coast for a cove
Speaker:where a ship might anchor out of sight,
Speaker:or seeking a woodcutter
Speaker:to see about felling a cedar
Speaker:for a new mast, or trading necklaces strung with amber
Speaker:and lazuli beads for flatbread and dried fish,
Speaker:or merely all heaving stores into the hold,
Speaker:naked and sweating
Speaker:and unashamed as primordial gods at their world-shaping labor,
Speaker:before he charged with them,
Speaker:laughing, splashing,
Speaker:into the surf to bathe.
Speaker:And every day he would set whatever task aside
Speaker:long enough to smile at the dog
Speaker:whom he knew as nothing more
Speaker:than a fellow man,
Speaker:and talk, and share a bowl of beer.
Speaker:Every day Talzu felt his heart become a little less his own,
Speaker:and foresaw that tomorrow
Speaker:it would be even less so.
Speaker:When finally Ouanaxes took him by the paw,
Speaker:pulled him without a word onto the ship,
Speaker:and led him to the stern
Speaker:where cushions were laid under the linen canopy,
Speaker:Talzu accepted that his heart was lost entirely.
Speaker:“How did you know?”
Speaker:Talzu asked, when their muzzles had parted.
Speaker:The taste of the pirate’s lips clung to his.
Speaker:“I am not a fool, my friend,”
Speaker:Ouanaxes gently unfastened the dog’s tunic,
Speaker:pulled him free of it
Speaker:and down into his arms.
Speaker:“I know enough to know when a man wants me.”
Speaker:The same motion of the lion’s paw
Speaker:somehow contrived to run up the dog’s side,
Speaker:explore the shape of his flank
Speaker:and underarm, then take him by the wrist
Speaker:and lead Talzu’s paw down Ouanaxes’s chest
Speaker:to rest between his bare thighs.
Speaker:“And I know,” it took only the smallest motion of his hand to touch the other man fully,
Speaker:but the lion had left that motion
Speaker:to Talzu to make,
Speaker:“that I want someone
Speaker:who wants me.” No man had touched Talzu,
Speaker:had held him, had loved him thus
Speaker:since Histuman had died.
Speaker:“Tonight,” the lion whispered,
Speaker:after, to the dog who lay in his arms,
Speaker:head on his breast,
Speaker:clutching him tightly.
Speaker:“I must at last go and seek your Oracle after all.”
Speaker:Ouanaxes gently stroked Talzu’s ears,
Speaker:and if the lion felt the dog freeze,
Speaker:for just a moment,
Speaker:he acknowledged it not.
Speaker:“What is it you seek to know?
Speaker:I may be able to answer it myself.”
Speaker:“Alas, I ask not after your heart, my friend.
Speaker:That,” the pirate kissed him,
Speaker:slowly, gently, “I mean to win wholly myself.
Speaker:I’ll not suffer fate’s interference there.
Speaker:No, someone advised me, when I first arrived,
Speaker:that the oracle might tell me how long it were safe to remain here.
Speaker:I needed to be ready,
Speaker:if it’s an unfriendly answer I’m given,
Speaker:to go at once.” “And you lay with me now.”
Speaker:Talzu’s brow furrowed,
Speaker:“knowing you might be about to depart?”
Speaker:“It was the last thing,”
Speaker:Ouanaxes smiled,
Speaker:“I had need to see completed,
Speaker:ere I could bear to depart.”
Speaker:Talzu had but barely enough time to make it back to the sanctuary,
Speaker:don his robes and mask, and calm himself before Ouanaxes came to seek the Oracle.
Speaker:“If you falsify prophecy, boy,
Speaker:because you wish to keep him…”
Speaker:Histuman would have whispered ominously in his ear,
Speaker:had the former oracle been there,
Speaker:“then may your spirit never again know
Speaker:peace.” “I know!” hissed Talzu, without moving.
Speaker:“Distracting me will not help!”
Speaker:The two nearest acolytes shared a worried look, behind their masks.
Speaker:But there was no time for concern,
Speaker:so the one went to the entrance,
Speaker:to meet the pirate,
Speaker:to command him to speak but once,
Speaker:and that to ask the question he had brought.
Speaker:It twisted Talzu’s heart within him to see the lion,
Speaker:so near, yet be unseen,
Speaker:be unknown. But Talzu’s
Speaker:heart was not what was wanted here, was it? Talzu was not who this man had come to seek.
Speaker:He sought the Oracle,
Speaker:did he not? And Ouanaxes needed the Oracle,
Speaker:no matter what the Oracle had to say, not Talzu. That thought proved enough to stiffen his will and empty his mind.
Speaker:He breathed in the fumes,
Speaker:steadily and silently,
Speaker:and felt fate fill him
Speaker:like a rising sap in spring fills the unfurling leaves.
Speaker:Just in time. “If I make harbor here,
Speaker:if I return here, from my raiding,
Speaker:when my ship and men have need,”
Speaker:the lion wore a cloak across his shoulders,
Speaker:drab and rough. Perhaps he meant to be disguised,
Speaker:seem less the warrior,
Speaker:more the peasant?
Speaker:Or perhaps he meant to seem humble before whatever divinity moved in the darkness before him?
Speaker:“will it remain for us a safe refuge?”
Speaker:But in fact it only made him seem the larger and more solid,
Speaker:like a wall hung with tapestries,
Speaker:“or will we be discovered here?”
Speaker:He was not the only one in this room,
Speaker:was he, whose concealing garments made him into something larger than he was?
Speaker:But of the two of them,
Speaker:the dog could see through the embellishing disguise
Speaker:to the man beneath,
Speaker:tense and uncertain,
Speaker:and the lion could not.
Speaker:That was, perhaps,
Speaker:the burden of being an oracle.
Speaker:This was the last thought in Talzu’s head
Speaker:before prophecy chased it out,
Speaker:to rattle about the inside of the mask,
Speaker:while the oracle declaimed,
Speaker:“Thy throne upon the sunset’s pillars calls
Speaker:In vain. From these obscure haunts you shall flee
Speaker:No more. Forsake you all that you could be,
Speaker:And frail old age you may yet live to see
Speaker:Beneath the hand
Speaker:of these oracular halls.”
Speaker:Surprised relief flashed across the pirate’s face.
Speaker:Whatever he had expected to hear,
Speaker:it was not that. Talzu’s head swam,
Speaker:his senses returned,
Speaker:and he first credited them not, for he thought
Speaker:he saw Ouanaxes on his knees,
Speaker:arms spread and palms raised in supplication.
Speaker:And only when the lion raised his face again,
Speaker:opened his mouth,
Speaker:eyes shining, for effusive thanks that never came
Speaker:because he remembered,
Speaker:just in time, he was not to speak again,
Speaker:did the Oracle understand
Speaker:that somehow his soothsaying
Speaker:had indeed been in both their favors.
Speaker:There had been no need to adulturate or bend it to keep his beloved.
Speaker:Fate, at least the piece of it Ouanaxes had asked,
Speaker:the piece Talzu had spoken,
Speaker:had been on their side.
Speaker:The lion left the sanctuary
Speaker:the one way, his step lightened,
Speaker:his eyes lifted up.
Speaker:The dog, after a time,
Speaker:left it the other way,
Speaker:shaken and scarce able to believe what his own mouth had said.
Speaker:Talzu found himself collapsed
Speaker:beneath the fruitless pomegranates he had once tended.
Speaker:One of his acolytes pressed his shoulder,
Speaker:gently, relieved to see he yet drew breath.
Speaker:“You spoke true, lad?”
Speaker:Histuman would have helped him to his feet by now,
Speaker:if he had been here,
Speaker:“That was prophesy indeed?”
Speaker:“I did,” Talzu croaked,
Speaker:and the Acolyte startled,
Speaker:for he knew not to whom Talzu spoke,
Speaker:“It came on me so strong
Speaker:that I couldn’t have resisted if I’d tried.”
Speaker:“Why then, rejoice,”
Speaker:Histuman would have said.
Speaker:“Please, can you stand?”
Speaker:whispered the Acolyte.
Speaker:“I will try.” Talzu answered both of them.
Speaker:“Some good fortune even we do not foresee,
Speaker:so it may as well fall to you, eh?”
Speaker:Histuman would have shook his head,
Speaker:baffled, as he was left behind
Speaker:in the tiny side garden
Speaker:to think on how strange the ways of fate had become.
Speaker:And as Talzu let himself collapse into bed,
Speaker:into sleep, he was grateful Histuman was not there to ask
Speaker:what else he had seen,
Speaker:of which he had spoken
Speaker:not a word.This was the first of two parts of
Speaker:“Let Him that Speaketh Fate to Men Have No Fate of His Own”
Speaker:by Rob Macwolf, read for you by William Dingo,
Speaker:the sunrise spectator.
Speaker:Tune in next time to find out how if Talzu and Ouanaxes’ life together remains as untroubled
Speaker:by fate as they hope.
Speaker:As always, you can find more stories on the web
Speaker:at thevoice.dog, or find the show wherever you get
Speaker:your podcasts. Thank you for listening
Speaker:to The Voice of Dog
