Page 17 of The Oracle's Journey

I wondered for a moment if perhaps we could carve an escape for ourselves and the women out of the impending mayhem? If the princess had anticipated the mercenary would follow her, perhaps Emmelina would follow Ozanna and save us the trouble of hunting her down.

The clatter of rubble falling from above interrupted my thought. I looked up and saw two talons clutching the very top of the cliff, about thirty yards above. The sight had me flattened against the stone, reaching for my blade in anticipation of some harpy or gryphon falling upon me. I watched, holding my breath, but released it when Emmelina’s face appeared over the talons and smiled down at me.

How marvelously odd.

“Well, there you are,” I said, relaxing. “Are you alright, princess?” It just seemed impolite to ask her why she had talons, which she could use to attack me.

She giggled, glanced down at the camp, and said, “Look!” I did. The elves were converging on Lobikno, closing in on him like a pack of predators. I called out a warning and dashed down the steps as fast as I could. I’d do him no good if I broke my neck on the way down.

Then the most peculiar thing happened. Two improbably large wasp nests fell from above, the sound of angry wings beating within. Strips of the papery nests peeled away, unraveling as they fell toward the camp. The nests disintegrated about six feet from the ground and the wasps exploded outward in a furious wave over the camp. They too were improbably large.

I paused my descent and looked back up for the princess, but she was no longer at the top of the cliff, she was on the stairs behind me, bare human feet padding along, blue dress hitched up to her knees. There was no way to the stairs from where she had been.

She gestured shoo with both her hands. I looked at her and shrugged. What else was there to do?

“Okay, then,” I agreed and continued, though not as quickly as before. What was I going to do against giant, angry wasps?

The elves below started yelling. I watched them scramble and thrash as the wasps swarmed them. Lobikno started running with his hands over his head, summoning his flame to burn them, but they passed by.

“Are you controlling them?” I asked the princess in astonishment as we worked our way down the steps.

“It wasn’t my idea. Ha!” she said and giggled again, somehow keeping up with my pace.

We got to the bottom of the stairs in time to see the chaos draw to a close. Ozanna sat up as I approached and said, with a giggle, “I no longer question my sanity. It’s kind of funny when it’s not me.”

The poor thing had finally slipped her saddle.

Four of the elves lay on the ground, unmoving, swollen beyond recognition, and obviously dead. The other seven, including Rhyfon, were groaning and covered in angry, oozing welts.

“Hope you have enough salve for that,” Ozanna snorted.

Ozanna

Lobikno untied me to help clean up the bodies. Being too drunkenly tired to be a threat probably made him open to giving me freedom. The elves swore they had been reporting to Lobikno for the search and not to kill him while Lhoris was up the rock face. The survivors were in terrible shape and weak, though the humans had escaped the worst of the attack. Only a few of them had run into the wasps as they buzzed away from the camp. I wondered if Lhoris just didn’t have the heart to kill his crew in cold blood, though Lobikno didn’t argue very hard either. Maybe they hoped that the other elves would be too ill to make another attempt. It didn’t make much sense to me. Lhoris seemed to defer to Lobikno frequently, if my interpretation of their body language was correct, so I couldn’t imagine the compromise between the brothers and the ailing elves wasn’t approved by the sterner of the two. The crew agreed to wait for someone named Dulanzo to come settle things between them and their officers. And because they’d come to an accord, I was promptly tied back up and carried around like luggage.

If it kept up for much longer, I’d sprout handles.

With the camp divided, Lhoris set up his bedroll between the fire and the carriage and put me on it. That brought back the odd conversation with his brother that evening, before Emmelina happened. My stomach flip flopped, and I curled around it for a moment. It was ridiculous to be so nervous! I was an experienced, worldly woman, confident in my body and what I could do with it. Maybe it was the situation. Maybe it was the rope. Then again, I’d never met another elf before let alone thought about coupling with one. There had been dwarves, but I’d never been nervous about them. Humans either. Was there some necessity of elven nature I hadn’t been aware of until I met another elf? Why was it just this elf that turned me into a silly little twit? Why wasn’t I scared?

I stared down at my bound hands and wondered. Nobody had taken any liberties. The closest being when Rhyfon grabbed my thighs in a frustrated attempt to reposition our riding posture.

I shook my head and tried to cast away my disjointed thoughts. There was no way to think through it while I was so fucking tired. It was only then I caught myself making faces while thinking things through.

“Are you unwell?” Lhoris asked as he approached with his satchel.

I was sure I looked dreadful. Eve had been kind enough to comb my hair after we’d finished off our portion of soup. But I was dirty from the road and felt like a shriveled, exhausted husk.

“Oh. Yes,” I huffed, “just thinking.”

“Really? It looked quite a bit more painful than that,” he teased and dropped to sit across from me on the bedroll.

“Ha ha,” I said, voice flat. “I’m just tired and pulling on threads I haven’t had time to untangle.”

“Well, I might have something that can help with being tired,” he said and started rummaging through his bag.

I looked over at the carriage and found Lobikno perched on the roof. Emmelina peered out the window with a big grin on her face.

An audience. Wonderful.

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