Mother of Oracles

Mother of Oracles




“The thing you must fear most," said the old woman, “is the very thing that fears you least.”

The King stared at this woman whose visage was placid as an alabaster mask, but whose appearance was dark and unpleasant. To the King the long, lose robes covering her entire body seemed crude, a mere patchwork of black rags; it contrasted strangely with the bright bits of faience and beads cunningly colored like emeralds, rubies and topaz that adorned her hair, hair which retained the appearance of youth , dark as her sable robes and piled high but loosely clasped. But despite her smooth pallid skin, her countenance was severe. Her hag-like appearance and black robes inspired the guards to superstitious terror.

After a lengthy silence the king spoke:

“I do not think, Mother of Oracles, your words are overly wise or much of a riddle. Kings live or die by the fear they inspire in others so your words are merely truths I know too well. I have ordered you brought here into my chamber, into my presence, because sages say you are unexcelled in the dark art of Chiromancy. These are precarious times for my Kingdom and I require your vision. You come from a heathen land and worship strange Gods I do not know. But you are known as the Mother of Oracles and I would seek your wisdom, if wisdom there be…”



He leaned forward from his throne of gold and ivory better to study her face.

“Your eyes are wise but treacherous,” said the King. “There is much of the serpent in them…”

“I see already without taking your hand, Great King, that you are troubled…and distrustful of all. Your soldiers inspected me well but not with the full enthusiasm they would have lavished on the young virgins of my temple.”

The old King laughed coarsely. “Beauty has its uses. But it is not beauty I require from you…but truth.”

“You wish to know your enemies,” she asked and a subtle insolence seemed to taunt from behind her words like an unveiled challenge.

The old and scared face of the King frowned.

“Perhaps...we have met before,” said the King, his face darkening.

Yesss, said the Mother of Oracles.

“When?” demanded the King

“I did not always live in a heathenish land. I lived in your Kingdom once…Once when you judged and condemned my son to death many, many years ago. You made certain I was present to watch the performance.”

“It is quite possible,” said the King. “I can’t recall the seas of Death behind me. No King can.”

With a contemptuous gesture, he leaned back into the splendor of his throne. And he asked:

Do you fear me, Old Mother?

“I fear Death and the King that wields the power of it.”

His great craggy head nodded approvingly.

“Still, perhaps, it is you I should fear. Perhaps I should remove that fear from my Kingdom.”

She merely smiled and said:

Give me your hand, great King, and I shall tell you if this is so.

Smiling hideously, he leaned forward to extend his hand.

Neither the King nor his guards saw the shadow glide from her high and loosely piled hair into the neck of her great sable robe.

Swiftly from her black sleeve, the small serpent uncoiled. It struck the King’s upturned palm before he could even cry out or pull back.

The Mother of Oracles seemed indifferent to this performance and seized his arm before he could retract it. His guards, far too stunned for instant action, stood motionless as she clasped that arm in a grip that seemed to the dazed King of more than mortal strength.

And then She, the Oracle, read aloud his fate.

A small creature of the earth has judged you, Mighty One. It had no fear of Kings or the powers they wield.

The small serpent had already glided back into the Old Mother’s sleeve.

“Have my words displeased you, O Mighty One?” she asked, scornfully. “Perhaps I shall pray for your evil soul this night in the Temple of Yig with my sisters.”

But there was no reply from a King who was already dead and whose bestial face was twisted and terrible to look upon.

Recovering from their shock, the King’s guards moved forward.


"Look upon the fate of Kings," said the Old Woman,"and let me pass."

And no man raised a hand to stop her.






Also included the original version of "The Map" as a poem in prose. Some differences.It's fitting that my last fiction posting should be a sequel and conclusion to "Wisdom of the King." Montag only got it half-right and I just had to show that Pennsylvanian hill boy how to do it right.--D.

The Map

He rushed into the fields in answer to the the urgency of his brother’s terrible cry.

There, amidst tall undulant grass that moved and whispered as if a gliding presence had just passed beneath,
he found a Form, towering and radiant, standing over his fallen brother. Cain knelt beside Abel’s silent body;
he saw the bloodied stone but comprehended nothing other than the savage nature of the Angel’s act.

“Why?” cried Cain. “In the Name of God, I demand…why?”

“In the Name of God, it was done,” said the angel, blazing bright as a sun. It turned away and was gone from Cain’s eyes.

For hours Cain remained kneeling in the windy field where the long grass seemed to whisper dry and brittle sounds--words he could almost understand. He cradled his brother’s head and listened to the incessant black whispers until other sounds--the alarmed, insistent cries of children--roused him from his strange dreamlike lethargy. The children playing had spied Cain by chance and now ran in terror to their families.

Cain carried his brother’s lifeless body home to find only curses and jeers awaiting him. A small child cast a rock, men rushed him with sticks in their hands. “Stop!” cried Adam’s voice, dark with anger, striking Cain’s heart like unexpected thunder on a summer’s clear day.

“Leave your brother’s body and depart from us forever. The earth will drink blood because of your sin.”

Cain’s protests were useless. No ear could hear them, no mind could understand them. He did as Adam commanded. He turned to the east, walking aimlessly through dusk and night and morning, moving like one in a dream from which he cannot awaken.

Over time Cain’s face grew terrible; it inspired revulsion and hatred in the breasts of all men. He shunned the habitations that lay in his path for he feared that men would murder him. He lived alone, a sparse and cursed existence; feared, hated, avoided by all men because of the terrible mark he bore. His home was a rank cave on a rough and rocky hillside overlooking the sea. It was here (as he returned from hunting one day) that he saw the angel again, waiting at the mouth of the cave. It no longer burned with the fierce radiance that Cain had known from their past encounter. Its body was bathed in a soft, gentle light.

“I recognize you. Why have you come to me?” said Cain, after a long moment of silence.

“To offer you what you once desired…understanding.”

Cain laughed bitterly. “God commanded you to slay my brother then clouded the minds of men against me and marked me as my brother’s killer. Leave me and speak not a word. I reject you, I reject God, I reject the understanding you would bring. Leave.”

But the angel would not--perhaps could not—do as Cain requested. Neither did he speak again. He merely waited. Perhaps he waited for Cain’s heart to soften, for Cain to accept the judgment and wisdom of the God the angel served so faithfully. The angel waited, the days turned into months, the months into years, the years passed, years beyond number, and gradually, the angel’s appearance began to change. Perhaps It languished. Its gentle radiance waned and grew dim. Its skin grew unhealthy in both color and texture. It began to sleep, something it had never done before. At times it even cried out like a man afflicted with nightmares. One day, Cain returned to the cave carrying a heavy stick. He beat the angel for a day and a night and then repeated the brutality after a short period of sleep. Over the years, he grew weary of administering such beatings. He fashioned a long leash from a rope and fastened one end to a stake grounded in the center of the cave…though the angel had never made any attempt to escape from its wretched state.

In following years, Cain taught it how to hunt for him, how to walk and even run on all fours like an animal. It began to crave food. Cain threw it scraps and watched as it ate ravenously.

One day, ill with fever, Cain left the cave. He could no longer look at the angel without a sense of guilt and revulsion. He told the angel when he returned he would free him. The angel could not understand his words; it mattered not for Cain never returned.

Later, perhaps centuries, a shepherd found the cave. Upon hearing sounds of movement within, he cautiously approached the opening. In the darkness at the back of the cave he heard a voice softly muttering to itself… and at that moment felt an inexpressible terror. Something was trying to speak and the poor shepherd could only think of what an animal might sound like if it tried to utter human words. He ran from the cave...but the next day returned with several other villagers. They produced torches and entered the cave. And they saw what crouched in the darkness there, still tethered by a long leash to a stake in the center of that cave.

All of them but one went completely mad at the thing they saw, a thing whimpering and crawling in the shadows of the cave. Only one man, a man who had feared greatly because of the sounds, was spared their fate. The sounds had been too terrible for him and he did not dare to look upon what made them.

In short time other villagers came. They led away the poor lunatics who had once been friends or fathers or sons to some of them, and they sealed that accursed place without ever looking at the horrible occupant.

It waits there still. In the silence, in the darkness. It waits like a loyal dog for the beloved master who abandoned it. It waits still.

Such are the ways of God.

+++++++++

Is the story true? I do not know. I am a poor man, a shepherd, and a shepherd cannot judge such things. To God alone is given the knowledge of such things. But the cave? Yes, I can draw you a map…my memory grows weak with the years…but silver can have a remarkable rejuvenating effect on it. Ahh!

Here then. You say you are a Divinity Student. And your pretty friend here...an amateur archeologist? I pray you find what you desire.