Dreams of the Oracle

Chapter 32

"So, he just sent lone men out in the mountains then?" asked Ashur wondering what was so wrong about that.

"No, he sent teams out. He just added new objectives."

"New objectives?"

"He would pull a man aside beforehand and tell him that if his team made it, he failed. He would pull an entire team aside and tell them that if a certain other team made it, they all failed. Then he would go to that same team and tell one of them that if the team they were supposed to sabotage didn't make it then he would fail. You can imagine that such training exercises disintegrated into chaos rather quickly."

Ashur nodded pensively.

"He would sneak out into the woods and tell a team that their objective was changed mere hours before they reached it. He would tell a team that they were only allowed to have food if they stole it from other teams. He would pull specific men aside and tell them they were only allowed to eat and drink if they stole it from the others of their team. Stories like that are almost endless."

Ashur looked from Mansin to the other Janin. They had all stopped smiling. A couple of them had foggy expressions as thought they were seeing painful things they had long buried in the recesses of their minds.

"Then he brought the Dreamwalkers," said Mansin his face suddenly darkening.

"I think that is enough," said Dain softly, glancing out the back of the wagon.

Mansin closed his mouth.

Ashur looked around at the solemnity that had fallen upon the men in the wagon. Only Segurant, whose lined face always looked to be facing the worst of the world, seemed unaffected. At least he seemed no more grim than usual.

More questions danced back and forth across the surface of his mind. He looked from one face to another hoping to find someone he could question further. He realized that this was probably the most he had ever heard anyone tell about his father in one sitting. At this point he hadn't quite decided how he felt about what he had heard but he did feel a burning desire to know more.

To his dismay, he seemed to have exhausted all the truths that the Janin had to offer him that day. Not a one of them would look him in the eye as he looked from one to the other. He looked down at the six silver daggers sheathed across his chest. Then he looked up again. There were two questions that rose ahead of the others. He leaned forward and looked over at Mansin.

"Why did they call him the Answerer?"

Mansin said nothing.

Ashur waited a moment and then asked,

"Who was Eli?"

Not a word was spoken the whole rest of the ride. Save for the pounding of the horse's hooves and the whirl of the wagon wheels there was utter silence. Segurant and the Janin all seemed lost in the benighted realms of their own darkest thoughts.

Ashur's own thoughts battled between the task at hand and the rescue of his sister and the processing of the new revelations about his father. Though he knew his sister and her rescue to be the more important there wasn't much more he could do about her than he was already doing. The thoughts of his father rose up inside of him.

His father was a man of secrets. A man who had told the men he trained they could only eat if the food was stolen from their comrades. A man who had ordered his men to turn on one another. Ashur's mind drifted to one of the many training sessions with his father.