Kirna handled it with extreme delicacy, holding it only by the sides of the block and placing it gently onto the waiting pile of furs.
“It’s been in my family since the Great War,” she said quietly. “One of my ancestors took it from the tent of a northern sorcerer when the Northern Empire fell and the victorious Ethsharites swept through these lands, driving the enemy before them.”
“What is it?” someone whispered.
“It’s an oracle,” Kirna said. “A sorcerer’s oracle.”
“Do we need a sorcerer to work it, then?”
“No,” Kirna said, staring at the glass dish and gently brushing her fingers down one side of the block. “My mother taught me how.”
She stopped and looked up.
“And it’s very old, and very delicate, and very precious, and we don’t know how many more questions it can answer, if it can still answer any at all, so don’t get your hopes up! We’ve been saving it for more than a hundred years!”
“Keeping it for yourselves, you mean!”
“And why not?” Alasha demanded, coming to her sister’s defense. “It was our family’s legacy, not the village’s! We’ve brought it out now, when it’s needed, haven’t we?”
Nobody argued with that.
“Go on, Kirna,” Wulran said quietly. “Ask it.”
“Ask it what, exactly?” she replied.
“Ask it who will save us from the dragon,” Pergren said. “None of us know how to kill it; ask it who can rid us of it.”
Kirna looked around and saw several people nod. “All right,” she said. She turned to the oracle, placed her hands firmly on either side of the block, and stared intently down into the glass dish.
Wuller was close enough to look over her left shoulder, while Illuré looked over her right, and Alasha and Wulran faced them on the other side of the oracle. All five watched the gleaming disk, while the rest of the crowd stood back, clearly more than a little nervous before this strange device. Wuller’s mother Mereth, in particular, was pressed back against the wall of the room, busily fiddling with the fancywork on her blouse to work off her nervousness.
“Pau’ron,” Kirna said. “Yz’raksis nyuyz’r, lai brinan allasis!”
The glass dish suddenly began to glow with a pale, eerie light. Wuller heard someone gasp.
“It’s ready,” Kirna said, looking up.
“Ask it,” Wulran told her.
Kirna looked about, shifted her knees to a more comfortable position, then stared into the dish again.
“We are beset by a dragon,” she said loudly. “Who can rid us of it?”
Wuller held his breath and stared as faint bluish shapes appeared in the dish, shifting shapes like clouds on a windy day, or the smoke from a blown-out candle. Some of them seemed to form runes, but these broke apart before he could read them.
“I can’t make it out,” Kirna shouted. “Show us more clearly!”
The shapes suddenly coalesced into a single image, a pale oval set with two eyes and a mouth. Details emerged, until a face looked up out of the dish at them, the face of a young woman, not much older than Wuller himself, a delicate face surrounded by billows of soft brown hair. Her eyes were a rich green, as green as the moss that grew on the mountainside.
Wuller thought he had never seen anyone so beautiful.
Then the image vanished, the glow vanished, and the glass dish shattered into a dozen jagged fragments.
Kirna let out a long wail of grief at the oracle’s destruction, while Illuré called, “Find me paper! I must draw the face before we forget it!”
4
Wuller stared at the portrait. Illuré had come very close, he thought, but she had not quite captured the true beauty of the face he had seen in the glass.
“Who is she?” Pergren asked. “It’s no one in the village, certainly, nor anyone I ever saw before.”
“Whoever she is, how can she possibly kill a hundred-foot dragon?” Pergren’s brother Gennar demanded.
“Maybe she’s a magician,” Pergren suggested.
“There must be more powerful magicians in the World than her, though,” Gennar objected. “If it just takes magic, why didn’t the oracle say so? Why not show us some famous powerful wizard?”
“Maybe she won’t kill it,” Alasha said. “Kirna asked who could rid us of the dragon, not who could slay it.”
Gennar snorted. “You think she’ll talk it into going away?”
“Maybe,” Alasha said. “Or maybe there’s another way.”
Pergren and Gennar turned to stare at her. Wuller was still looking at the picture.
Illuré certainly had a talent for drawing, he thought; the charcoal really looked like shadows and soft hair.
“What do you mean?” Pergren asked Alasha.
“I mean, that in some of the old stories, there are tales of sacrifices to dragons, where when a beautiful virgin willingly gave herself to the monster the beast was overcome by her purity, and either died or fled after devouring her.”
Pergren glanced at the picture. “You think that’s what she’s to do, then? Sacrifice herself to the dragon?”
Gennar snorted. “That’s silly,” he said.
“No, it’s magic,” Alasha retorted.
“Why don’t you sacrifice yourself, then, if you think it’ll work?” Gennar demanded.
“I said a virgin,” Alasha pointed out.
“She said beautiful, too,” Pergren said, grinning. Alasha tossed a pebble at him.
“We have a couple of virgins here,” Gennar said. “At least, I think we do.”
“Virgins or not,” Pergren said, “the oracle said that she would rid us of the dragon.” He pointed to the picture Wuller held.
“No,” said Alasha, “it said she could rid us of the dragon, not would.”
That sobered all of them.
“So how do we find her?” Pergren asked. “Do we just sit here and wait for her to walk into the village, while that monster eats a sheep a day?”
“I’ll go look for her,” Wuller said.
The other three turned to him, startled.
“You?” Gennar asked.
“Why not?” Wuller replied. “I’m small enough to slip away without the dragon noticing me, and I’m not doing anything important around here anyway.”
“How do you expect to find her, though?” Pergren asked. “It’s a big world out there.”
Wuller shrugged. “I don’t know, for sure,” he admitted, “but if we had that oracle here, then surely there will be ways to find her in the cities of the south.”
Gennar squinted at him. “Are you sure you aren’t just planning to slip away and forget all about us, once you’re safely away?”
Wuller didn’t bother to answer that; he just swung for Gennar’s nose.
Gennar ducked aside, and Wuller’s fist grazed his cheek harmlessly.
“All right, all right!” Gennar said, raising his hands, “I apologize!”
Wuller glared at him for a moment, then turned back to the portrait.
“I think Wuller’s right,” Pergren said. “Somebody has to go find her, and I’ve heard enough tales about the wizards of Ethshar to think that he’s right, finding a magician is the way to do it.”
“Why him, though?” Gennar demanded.
“Because he volunteered first,” Pergren said. “Besides, he’s right, he is small and sneaky. Remember when he stole your laces, and hid in that bush, and you walked right past him, looking for him, half a dozen times?”