Larson paced fretfully between Gaelinar and Silme. The shock of Brendor's death had faded, replaced by memories of the demon in his nightmare. Repeatedly, he replayed the scene in his mind. Each time, the shapeless shadowform sprang from the oracle's swirling mass of flame, shredding Silme's body with talons sharp as steel. And always Larson's defense came too late to save his beloved.
Silme knocked on the temple door. The heavy, wooden panel muffled sound nearly to silence. It was opened almost instantly by a young man who ushered Larson and his companions inside. He wore a clean gray cloak. Lines of hardship marred his features, but his lips curled in an amiable smile. He flicked away his hood, and hair the color of goldenrod fell to his shoulders. "Have you come to pay homage?"
Silme tapped the base of her dragonstaff against the earthen floor. "We wish to see the oracle."
The acolyte's expression grew grave. He led his new charges past groups of priests engaged in ritual. Light spilled through numerous windows, muted to gray haze by crudely thickset glass. Other acolytes nodded pleasantly as they passed, and Larson found nothing inherently threatening about the temple to Odin. Still, the memory of his nightmare wracked his spine with shivers, and anxiety closed him in an icy grip.
The acolyte led Larson and his companions past a row of three stone altars. The elf paused by the last, attracted by a stain dark as spilled wine. Closer inspection revealed the faint odor of death. Larson flinched back with a small cry and crashed against Gaelinar.
The Kensei turned swiftly and followed Larson's horrified gaze. He answered the unspoken question in a whisper. "War casualties, Allerum . Calm down. You've seen blood before." He caught the elf by a cloak sleeve and hauled him through a silver-threaded curtain identical to the one in the dream inspired by Bramin.
In the adjoining room, the oracle sat before her marble table. As Larson, Silme, and Gaelinar stepped through the curtain, she raised her red- maned head. One blue eye examined her visitors with withering disdain. Beside it, a scarred socket gave mute testimony to the traumatic loss of her other eye. Leery of the oracle's disfigured and condemning features, Larson stared at the viewing stone before her. In the dream, he had thought the gemstone a diamond. Closer, he recognized it as a nearly transparent, oval-shaped block of quartz. Yet some work of nature or magic gave it the strange, eye-like configuration of green- irised black.
The oracle laced her long fingers on the table. Red hair streaked her knuckles like blood. "Welcome, Lady Silme, Sapphirerank." Her eye met Larson and Gaelinar in turn, but she extended them no greeting. "You have a question for my divination? Come forward."
Larson drew his sword and stepped forward with Silme. He poised a half stride before and to the right of the sorceress. His hand shook against Valvitnir's hilt. His tongue went dry as cotton. Hyperalert, Larson recognized Silme's drooping eyelids and shoulders and knew the enchantments she had channeled against Brendor had heavily tapped her physical energy.
The oracle's face went pale with a strange combination of anger and fear. "I'll not be threatened," she said softly. "There shall be no bare steel in my chamber."
Gaelinar gripped Larson's sword arm. "What's the matter with you?" he asked in a chastening whisper. "You've been acting strangely since we entered the temple."
Larson sheathed Valvitnir reluctantly. His reply was an anxious plea. "Just watch Silme. Please?"
Kensei Gaelinar scowled in offense, but he held his tongue with the subtlety of a master. "I always do," he answered after a moment. To Larson's relief, his instructor paced to Silme's other side.
The oracle waited until the men completed their exchange, then continued as if the disturbance had never occurred. "Your query, Dragonmage?"
Silme's words slurred slightly, as if the mere effort of gathering breath taxed her remaining strength. "Please, lady. My question concerns Allerum's sword, a quest, and the tranquillity of Midgard. Will hurling Valvitnir in the Helspring of Hvergelmir bring rescue or ruin to the gods of law and men?"
The oracle bent her head over the crystal, and her endless sea of hair covered the scrying stone like a curtain. Larson watched in horror as her wrinkled hand passed twice above the gemstone. He tried to loosen muscles coiled to pain by tension.
Silme yawned and rubbed fatigue from her eyes. Larson voiced a staccato grunt and edged closer to the sorceress. The oracle sat as still as death. Minutes dragged like hours. By the time the oracle looked up from her device, Larson had nervously worked his way directly in front of Silme.
The oracle's lips framed a smug smile which disappeared as she addressed Silme. "Have no fear, sorceress. Your quest is sanctioned. But quickly now; time runs short."
Silme looked around Larson with newfound energy, as if suddenly freed of some grave responsibility. "Thank you, lady. Your efforts may have saved our world from Chaos. May Odin continue to grace you with his favor. "
"And Vidarr, you." The oracle returned the compliment in kind.
Irony made Silme wince. She turned, strode across the chamber, and passed through the shimmering curtain with Gaelinar at her heels. Larson retreated with more caution, gaze locked mistrustfully on the oracle whose lips pursed in antagonizing confidence. Wired, and eager to desert the red-haired seer who had become so abruptly lethal in his nightmare, Larson scrambled through the cloth slit. He jostled against Gaelinar in his haste.
The Kensei rolled his eyes with fading indulgence, and followed Silme around the milling acolytes. His glares grew less tolerant when Larson twice trod on his heels in his rush to vacate the temple to Odin. Once they stepped from the grayed interior of the building to the pleasure of afternoon, Larson loosed a shuddering sigh of relief. Even the biting winds seemed preferable to another moment of emotional agitation, especially to an elf impervious to winter's chill.
Larson and his companions mounted their horses. Ten minutes into their journey back toward the river Sylg, Larson shed the last of his apprehension and muttered to himself in triumph, "The half-breed ain't as all powerful as he thought."
Silme caught his arm. "Did you say something?"
Larson shook his head in denial. Then, seeing no reason to hide the truth from Silme any longer, he explained. "Bramin came to me in a dream and promised violence if we contacted the oracle. Idle threats, I'm certain, but just scary enough that I:" He broke off as Silme reined with an abruptness which sent her horse into a startled half rear.
"I thought I sensed his presence." Silme shaped her words with a self-accusatory anger. "But I blamed it on paranoia and weakness. Quickly now.
The oracle may be endangered." She turned her steed and kicked it to a gallop back toward Odin's temple.
Gaelinar whipped his horse about and reined after Silme. More accustomed to cars than horses, Larson clung to saddle and mane as his mount wheeled and followed its fellows at a run. They covered lost ground in minutes. Stopping only to tether the horses, Silme rushed to the dooryard, her companions close behind. Without troubling to knock, she pushed open the temple door. Priests looked up in alarm, but the sorceress paid them no heed. At a trot, she led Gaelinar and Larson through the slit in the silver-threaded curtain.
The oracle's chamber was as Larson remembered it from both dream and reality. Its dim, dank interior supported a marble block on which the eye-like crystal lay balanced on an edge. Gray cloth drapes covered the room's three walls. Conspicuously absent was the oracle of Hargatyr.
Larson waited by the slitted entrance, prepared for violence. Gaelinar stood in the center of the chamber, and his eyes followed Silme's anxious path. The sorceress peered behind the marble, paused a moment in confusion, then trotted to a far corner. She peeled aside a corner of the curtain which hid the back wall. Matched, gold-tasseled cords fell into her hand. When she pulled one, the cloth parted. Beyond, Larson and his companions saw a smaller chamber.