"What do we do? Ask him questions? Beg his advice? What form does this Oracle take?"
"You ask a few simple, direct questions. Si-Amun will respond in the language of the Oracle, which is the language of the Amazigh peoples of Libya. They often have blue eyes with fair hair, their origin is unknown. I will translate his words into Greek for you. His responses are for you to interpret according to your understanding. Afterwards you pay the Oracle whatever sum you feel he deserves for his insights."
"Let's do it now," Suetonius said.
The venerable ancient had been woken from his sleep. His bleary eyes, crumpled linens, and tattered ethnic knits hung from his bony frame in untidy drapes. His shaven head had a week's growth of blotchy grey fuzz while a straggly single lock of hair bundled to one side of his cranium tied with a ribbon signified his racial origin.
The Amazigh priest put on his weathered headdress of ostrich feathers with curled ram's horns at each temple, and snapped beaten metal bracelets to his arms with decorative chains hung around his neck. They were inscribed in all manner of arcane symbols.
The priest was no youngster. In fact his age, like that of Pachrates, was indiscernible. His skin had tanned under the Siwa desert sun to a leathern dun, with deep corrugations creasing into craggy facial flesh. He had the weathered appearance of a sun-dried, dusty Siwa date of considerable age.
He observed his late night clients with an unblinking, intense gaze.
Both Suetonius and Clarus were immediately struck by the penetrating blue-gray of his eyes squinting from within his bronzed crevasses. The squint's focus probed deep into their eyes. His gaze penetrated behind their corneas, behind their deeper vision, and searched into some distant part of their being hidden at their core. The gaze was disturbing.
Kenamun spoke to the priest in an unfamiliar tongue. Surisca feigned disinterest in the dialogue as occasional familiar words and phrases stumbled through her comprehension. She listened as carefully as she could.
Kenamun spoke in a hushed, reverential whisper. A solitary oil lamp cast flickering light across the old man's features.
"The Great Oracle, Si-Amun of the Ammoneion of Siwa, will prepare for his special vocation," Kenamun announced. "Si-Amun will consume the special sacrament of his gift. It is a substance found only among the desert stones of Siwa."
The ancient of days produced a small receptacle filled with several unprepossessing lumps of a substance with the appearance of crumbled rock or wood ashes. He took silver tweezers and placed a few small lumps onto a metal ornamental tray. One of Kenamun's servants held a lighted taper beneath the tray to heat its thin base.
After some moments wisps of white fume rose from the tray. Si-Amun did precisely as Suetonius had done only two days earlier at The House of the Blue Lotuses. He fanned the fumes into his face and nostrils with both hands while muttering a low chant in his foreign tongue. Minutes of chanting in the stillness passed.
Si-Amun was suddenly galvanized. He sat bolt upright on his stool. He fumbled to unpin a fibula to permit a beaded veil to fall from his headdress across his face, masking his features from sight. His voice assumed an energized clarity of tone. His antique age seemed to dissolve as he fell into a thoughtful silence awaiting Kenamun's questioning words.
"You may begin," the priest mortician nodded. "Ask, but be respectful."
Clarus was moved to ask the opening question.
"Oracle of Siwa, who speaks to us here tonight?" he asked magisterially as Strabon's stylus prepared to flutter over fresh wax.
There was a lengthy pause before Si-Amun spoke. He repeatedly shook his ostrich feather headdress, which gave a rustling sound akin to a feathery systrum, while he rattled a real systrum in one hand. The voice was no longer the sharp clear vocal character of the ordinary priest, it had a rumbling depth of throatiness as though calling from the bottom of a deep well. His Amazigh words were haltingly translated by the mortician.
"I am Amun, the hidden god. Amun is Ra. Amun is Ptah. Zeus Ammon is Amun. Jupiter is Amun. Serapis is Amun. I am Osiris who Seth destroyed but Isis restored. I am who I am."
Suetonius was startled by this heady declaration, yet adventurously posed the next question.
"Great Ammon of the Oracle of Siwa please tell, why did Antinous of Bithynia die?"
Again a long pause as the ostrich feathers shimmered, flurried, and trilled while the systrum rattled. Kenamun slowly translated the stumbled response.
"The son of Apollo ascended to the sun. The sun burnt the youth. The wild forces of Eros overcame the civil power of Aphrodite. A hidden secret unleashed the chaos of Eros so stalking wolves could devour their prey."
The group looked among each other, mystified.
"If that is 'why', Si-Amun, then how did Antinous die?" Suetonius asked, faintly unsettled by talk of wolves devouring their prey.
Another long pause prevailed as feathers and systrum rustled, shimmered, and rattled.
"The son of Apollo bled into Darkness. The stalking wolves sipped his blood."
"Are you saying Antinous was murdered, Great Oracle?"
Again a pause of rustles and rattles.
"The son of Apollo made an offering at the altar of his brother Asclepius. He offered his only true spoils to the altar, his life. Stalking wolves devoured the spoils with relish."
"Asclepius?" Clarus exclaimed. "Why Asclepius, Apollo's son and the god of healing? Are you certain?"
Suetonius dismissed the query; he felt he was close to some answers.
"Who is the murderer, Great Oracle? Who killed Antinous?" Suetonius called aloud with quavering emotion. All held their breath after a long period of rustling passed and then ceased.
"A wolf's sword exacts its revenge. A she wolf's delusion drinks its fill. But the path to the sacrificial altar was smoothed by a king's secret."
"Wolves. She wolves. A king's secret. Where are we in all this?" Clarus groaned plaintively.
Si-Amun's voice responded immediately in crisp Common Greek.
"On a journey of justice for the king. Identify the She Wolf. Apprehend the wolves. Send them to the Underworld of the alien god."
"Who is their god?" Clarus asked, realizing to identify the deity might identify the malefactors.
Si-Amun expelled a loud cry of pained anguish. His body trembled violently. His voice quavered with emotion.
"The Baal of the East who came to the West. The Drinker of Blood. The Wolf Deity."
The group looked to each other, utterly perplexed.
"How will we punish the murderer or murderers, Great Oracle of Amun?"
Pause.
"Fire purifies," came the simple response. "Fire purifies!"
"What of Antinous? Will Antinous return from Hades?" Suetonius dared to propose, atypically, illogically, unexpectedly. Is resurrection on the agenda? The pause was brief, the voice clear.
"The son of Apollo rises with the new dawn, when the king's heart bursts with anguish. Self-knowledge renews his soul."
The rustle of feathers and systrum ceased. Everyone in the chamber was silent.
Si-Amun slowly toppled from his stool to the pavilion floor. His feathered headdress fell from his face revealing his shaven scalp and features streamed with beads of sweat. His mouth was drooling spittle while his hands quivered finely by his side.
"Is your Oracle alright?" Suetonius asked Kenamun as Surisca tried to help raise the ageing man from the beaten earth floor. He was reviving from his drug trance.
"He puts his all into it," was Kenamun's simple answer. Suetonius delivered a small gold coin from his purse into Si-Amun's sweaty palm.
"Well, what do we make of that?" Clarus asked when the four had departed the Egyptian pavilions. "It was quite a show. Did you get a full record, Strabon?"
The scribe nodded.
"What do you think he was telling us?" Suetonius queried. "Was it all nonsense, or was there some truth to it? Surisca, what do you think, you know the ways of these people?"