Oracle

Cullius Amadeo crouched, motionless, in the shadows of the reeking alley; his senses tuned to his surroundings. His injured shoulder had begun to throb and the chill drizzle seeped through the hood of his heavy black cloak to drip miserably down the back of his neck. Somewhere nearby, a pair of scrawny alley cats engaged in a furious duel over the tattered corpse of a rat. Closer at hand, the air was heavy with the stench of freshly spilled entrails and the ragged gasps of the dying man at his feet.

The wiry little rogue swore silently. Today had started so well, and had turned to dung so quickly. He was definitely getting too old for this.

The meeting with Senneka, earlier in the day, had been much more successful than Cull had expected and his spirits were high as he left to return to the inn. His mood soured a little when he realised he was being followed.

Cull, having survived on the razor's edge for more than half his life, recognised the first of his tails almost immediately. The scrawny build, dark shifty eyes and greasy blond hair could only belong to Tarko, a local Guild member and petty cutpurse with ambitions beyond his abilities.

He decided to feign ignorance for a while and find out why the man was following him. After all, he was in no great hurry to return to the others; they would not be going anywhere until the weather cleared anyway.

It soon became clear that Tarko was not working alone; Cull spotted Vard and Gemmel, two other minor members of the Guild and known associates of Tarko’s, from time to time, as they slipped through the crowd.

He wondered, briefly, whether Senneka had sent them to steal back the map for which he had just paid her a small fortune, but soon dismissed the idea. He had been dealing with the captivating Head of the local Guild both as a business partner and, occasionally, as a lover, for many years, and that kind of petty betrayal simply was not her style.

Tarko and his companions trailed Cull for hours, cunningly switching every few minutes in a vain attempt to remain inconspicuous.

Cull nonchalantly went about his business; he did not want to lose Tarko, but he had no intention of making life easy for the little snake. From time to time, he gave his shadows the slip for a few heartbeats, just to make them panic, before allowing himself to be found again.

As the sun began to set and the evening mist turned to light rain, Cull became bored with the game and resolved to confront his pursuers.

Suddenly breaking into a sprint, he dodged through the thinning crowd and ducked into the alley where he now squatted. Using his momentum, he scrambled nimbly up the wall to a narrow window ledge, some ten feet above the ground. Secure on his precarious perch, he drew a large hunting-knife from his boot and waited for Tarko and the others.

Several moments passed, with no sign of his erstwhile hunters when, suddenly, the window behind him exploded outwards, flinging Cull from the ledge and cannoning him into the opposite wall.

Shaken by the impact, Cull lurched to his feet and instinctively dived into a roll.

The movement saved his life, as a crossbow bolt nicked his shoulder and smashed into the wall. Spinning, Cull hurled his knife at the bowman framed in the shattered window, striking him low in the abdomen and toppling him out into the alley, where he landed with a sickeningly wet crunching sound.

Drawing another pair of knives, Cull sprang across the alley to crouch against the wall beside his wounded adversary. If the man had any allies in the room, they would have to show themselves in order to attack him.

The man at his feet was clad all in black, his face obscured by a close-fitting mask. Cull's knife jutted from a grisly wound in his belly and the fall from the window had left his head and neck grotesquely twisted, but incredibly, the man still lived, calmly observing Cull with clear, dark eyes.

Satisfied that the crippled man was not about to attack him again, Cull returned his focus to his surroundings, anticipating the arrival of Tarko and his associates.

Seconds dragged into minutes, the rain becoming increasingly heavy. The cats down the alley ended their war and still no new attackers appeared. Eventually, Cull's instincts told him that he was no longer in immediate peril and he turned his scrutiny to his mangled foe.

The man was clearly close to death. Loops and coils of intestine had bulged through the gaping rip in his gut, tearing the horrendous gash even wider, the flow of blood had slowed to almost nothing and his breathing had become slow and shallow. His eyes were still composed and alert, however, as he returned Cull's gaze.

As Cull reached out and gently removed the mask, the dying man drew a deep, ragged breath and whispered, “As fast… as we… thought you'd… be... Well played… Oracle.”

Cull recoiled. He had not used that name in almost fifteen years, not since he was a teenage member of the Guild in Shreeveport. Had his past finally tracked him down again?

“Who in the Nine Hells are you?” he demanded through clenched teeth.

“You'll… find out… soon enough… Oracle” The reply was barely audible, but the lips twisted in a grim parody of a smile. “We… enjoyed… watching you… play… with… our... hirelings… today… Very… impressive...” The voice trailed away as its owner finally expired, leaving Cullius the Oracle alone with his memories.

He had absolutely no recollection of the earliest years of his childhood, but he was a starving, homeless, nameless child of around twelve years old, when Garellus Amadeo, the ageing head of the Shreeveport Thieves Guild befriended him and gave him a home.

Ancient Garellus was unstintingly benevolent to the young waif, treating him like a son, naming him Cullius and teaching him the basics of the skills he, and all thieves, used to perpetrate their business.

Young Cullius learnt quickly, eager to please, and was soon out on the streets again, this time relieving the populace of their coins and trinkets and taking them home to his new father.

Then, Cull discovered that his mentor had a passion for possessing information that other people wanted to remain confidential. From that point onwards, the young thief concentrated his efforts on honing the skills that could put him in places where secrets could be learnt.

The young man found that his appetite for fact and rumour was at least as voracious as Garellus' and he was soon devoting all his time to the accumulation of other people's knowledge.

His acquisition of hearsay was broadly omnivorous in nature; which merchant was expecting a delivery? Whose wife was having an affair with whom? When was this noble planning a trip, where was he going and for how long? What did that merchant keep under the floorboards of his bedroom? Who was responsible for the dead body in the river? Which members of the Watch were willing to look the other way, for what price? Were any members of the Guild mutinous or deficient on their tithes? Cull wanted to know and usually found a way to find out.

By the time he was fourteen, nothing occurred in Shreeveport that Cull had not heard at least a rumour about. Such was the extent and accuracy of the lore he amassed that Garellus took to calling him 'Cullius the Oracle', or simply 'Oracle'.

Having a reputation, as the man from whom secrets could not be kept, changed Oracle's life in two important ways. Firstly, it made him rich; people were willing to pay handsomely for the morsels of intelligence he gathered. Information leading to a successful robbery or blackmailing earned Oracle a tenth share of the take, and Garellus was more than grateful for insight that allowed him to keep control of the Guild.

The second change was that Oracle began to accumulate enemies; Guild members who survived word of their dissatisfaction or tithe-skimming reaching Garellus' ear, although they were few, obviously held grudges. There were also others, jealous of Oracle's status as Garellus' favourite. Foremost among this latter group was Rakkar Neelian, Garellus' second in command and heir apparent to the leadership of the Guild.

Oracle was not overly concerned; he was too valuable to the Guild for Garellus to allow any of his foes to attempt an assassination, and the chances of anyone plotting against The Oracle without his knowledge were slim. He accepted the animosity as one of the hazards of his chosen profession and mostly ignored it. He made no attempt to mitigate Neelian's jealousy, however; the antipathy was mutual. To Oracle's mind, the man was an arrogant, egocentric weasel whose only loyalty was to himself.

He underestimated his foe, however. Neelian was an influential and charismatic figure in the Guild, whose word carried a lot of weight with the higher-ranking members. He was skilled in Guild politics and had built his reputation and following through long years of hard work, ruthless ambition and audaciously executed coups. His enemies had a tendency to wind-up arrested, exiled, dead or simply vanished.

When Oracle was seventeen, Garellus finally succumbed to old age and passed away, quietly in his sleep, at the venerable age of one hundred years. He was succeeded, as expected, by Rakkar Neelian, whose first act as Guild Master, was to demand that all Guild members swore an oath of absolute fealty to him. Of the four hundred members of the Guild, twenty-two refused, Oracle among them. His allegiance had always been to Garellus first and the Guild second. With the old man gone, and his successor being a man that Oracle despised, he decided that the time had come to move on.

Neelian, though, had other ideas. He instigated a purge of all those members who spurned the oath. In a single night of carnage, he released the Guild's Assassins with orders to return with the heads of all the dissenters.

Oracle was the only one to survive, slaying the killers who came to execute him and fleeing into the night with nothing but the clothes on his back. He hoped that his departure from Shreeveport would be enough for Neelian, but it was not to be the case. A couple of tendays later, he recognised one of Neelian's lackeys lurking outside his lodgings and he once again found himself forced to flee.

For the next six years, that was to be Cull's life; travelling from town to town, scraping a living where he could, stealing to survive, always alert for any sign of Neelian's hounds. They always appeared eventually and compelled him to move on. Most often, he managed to evade them entirely, but, on several occasions, he was unable to avoid murderous confrontations with his hunters, leaving a trail of nameless corpses all across the Heartlands.

Then, after a particularly messy encounter that left four of his stalkers butchered in an inn, the chase seemed to stop. He continued to relocate regularly, just in case, but eventually, after eighteen moons, it occurred to him that he might finally be free from Neelian's persecution.

Almost eight years on the run had left their mark on Cull. At twenty-five, he found that he could no longer relax and drop his guard, even for an instant. On entering a room, he would scan for the location of exits and possible escape routes; everyone was subject to scrutiny and evaluation as a potential threat. He found it impossible to sleep for more than two hours at a time and then not without at least one knife under his pillow. His natural state was one of perpetual vigilance, his deep-set dark eyes continually darting around, missing nothing, senses constantly alert to the slightest unexpected change in his surroundings.

The stress of the prolonged chase had also affected him physically; his mousy hair and sparse beard were speckled with grey and his previously wiry frame had become positively scrawny. He rarely smiled and his normally nondescript features had become sharper and more drawn.

With time to think, he suddenly realised just how empty his life had become. For years, he had dedicated his whole existence to mere survival. He had contacts, acquaintances and associates in scores of towns and cities across the continent, people like Garellus for the most part; rogues, thieves and outlaws, but no real friends at all. His closest ally was Senneka and even their relationship carried the taint of Cull’s inability to allow people to get too close.

At about the same time, Cull became aware of Wraith and her friends; the word on the street said that they were recruiting members to form an adventuring company. After satisfying himself that they had no connection with the Guild, he decided to join their band.

Since that day, just over seven years ago, although Cull still lived in a state of constant wariness, he had allowed himself some brief respite from time to time and had learnt to relax occasionally. His guard never dropped completely, but he could now at least lower it slightly if he wanted to. He had had no indication that Neelian might not have wholly abandoned his vendetta, until tonight.

Cull dragged his attention away from the past and concentrated once more on his current situation. A search of the dead man produced absolutely nothing; the body carried no identification, wore no jewellery and had no distinguishing marks. Neither was he carrying any money, weapons or equipment, save the unremarkable, and now shattered, crossbow.

Scaling the wall, Cull slipped through the ruined window and quickly searched the room beyond. Again, the inspection was fruitless; the room was barren. Obviously, the man had only been in there for a matter of moments. The thick dust on the floor was barely disturbed, and then only immediately inside the window. There was no indication of forced entry or prolonged occupation; it was as if, at the instant the window had exploded, the assassin had materialised out of thin air.

Magic was the only explanation and whoever Cull's attacker had been, he did not look like a mage. Spells of that calibre were both rare and expensive, so he must have had access to the services of a relatively powerful magic-user. He had implied that he was not working alone and he had known entirely too much about The Oracle.

The more he thought about it, the more convinced Cull became that his attacker was working for Neelian. The Guild knew all about Cullius the Oracle, they had affiliations with at least a hand count of wizards powerful enough to cast teleportation spells and they obviously still wanted him dead.

Nevertheless, something did not quite ring true; if this was another Guild sponsored attack, why had they not simply shot him? Why had they spent a full day, and probably wasted valuable scrying spells, watching him play cat and mouse with Tarko and his colleagues? Indeed, why had they hired Tarko at all? The Guild had access to any number of truly proficient trackers without having to resort to using local amateurs. Why risk alerting Cull to his peril? It was almost as if they were testing him, seeing how he dealt with the situation and measuring his reactions. Even when the assault had finally come, they had not tried particularly hard to finish it. A lone assassin, a single crossbow bolt, poorly delivered and not even poisoned?

Every question seemed to spawn half a dozen more. He shook himself and ran his fingers through his damp, dishevelled hair. The situation was all far too complex for Cull to untangle at the moment. He was injured, cold, wet, and tired; he needed time to reflect on today's events somewhere warm, dry and safe. Perhaps his friends would be able to make some sense of what had happened.

Easing back into the alley, he retrieved his knife, cleaning it on his erstwhile attacker's cloak before returning it to its sheath in his boot. He then dragged the body further down the alley, concealing it in the middle of a large pile of garbage. Confident that the corpse would remain undiscovered for at least two days, and determined that, by then, he and his comrades would be well out of town, Cull took to the rooftops, alert for any sign of pursuit. He spotted nothing, but still decided to take a roundabout route back to the inn where his companions waited.

She smiled as she watched him creeping away.

He had reacted just as they had known he would; time had not dulled his edge in the slightest. The Father would be pleased.

Wraith's band would be embarking on their quest tomorrow, following the information she had made available. Almost a millennium of meticulous planning and painstaking nurturing would soon reach fruition.

Turning away from the scrying crystal, she muttered an enchantment and sighed in satisfaction as the body of his latest victim appeared on the floor at her feet.

Watching him at work had always made her hungry and now it was time to feed.