Eye of the Oracle

by Bryan Davis

  Hannah backed up against the bedroom’s far wall and flattened her palms against the plaster. “You” she swallowed hard “you have been following me around for centuries?” She glanced at an open window, just an arm’s length from her hand. “Why should I believe a word you are saying?”

  Elam raised the Ovulum onto his fingertips. “Because I bear the dwelling place of the Eye of the Oracle.” He drew it closer to his face and said, “Fiat lux.” The glass began to glow, and a nebulous crimson cloud took shape within.

  A look of curiosity swept across Hannah’s face. She took a half step forward, craning her neck. “Can you see him?”

  The cloud congealed into the shape of an eye, bright and clear. Dozens of reddish hues painted the pupil, the iris, and every serpentine capillary. Elam nodded at the pulsing egg. “Yes, but he rarely speaks, he ”

  A squeak sounded, the whine of the front door’s rusty hinges. Elam spun around and laid his ear on the bedroom door, whispering, “Are you expecting someone?”

  Hannah shook her head and began inching toward the window. A slow creak drifted in from the hallway, a bending floor plank on the other side of the door.

  The Ovulum’s temperature spiked hotter in Elam’s hand, and an urgent whisper hissed from the shell. “Fly! A dark knight is coming quickly!”

  Elam rushed to the window. Hannah had already straddled the sill. Grabbing her wrist, he lowered her to the ground, then scrunched low and leaped out. They backed away from the cottage, watching for any movement in the room. Suddenly, Devin vaulted through the window frame. Before the dark knight hit the ground, Palin followed. As Devin straightened, he faltered for a moment, clutching his leg in pain.

  “He’s hurt!” Elam said, grabbing Hannah’s arm. “Run!”

  Hannah jerked free. “No! I am through running!” She snatched the Ovulum from Elam and held it in her outstretched hand. “Thousands of years ago, I saw the Ovulum protect the ark of Noah from the most powerful demons in the world. I am sure it can hold off two of their stupid lackeys.”

  Devin withdrew his sword and stalked toward them with Palin at his side, his sword also at the ready. As the Ovulum pulsed bright rings of red, Devin stopped and sneered. “You would battle two knights with a glass bauble?” he asked in an old English dialect.

  “It is enough for the likes of you,” Hannah snapped, using the same dialect.

  Devin swiped his sword over Hannah’s palm, slicing through the Ovulum. The top half fell to the ground and spun in the grass. He flashed a mocking smile. “Sorry to crush your hopes, dragoness, but your faith is fatally misplaced.”

  As Devin drew back his sword again, the lower part of the Ovulum spewed a towering fountain of scarlet sparks that streamed in every direction. Hannah jerked her hand away, dropping the broken egg. The half shell rocked back and forth and continued gushing until the streams coalesced into two cyclonic columns that spun like crimson tornados between the pairs of opponents.

  One of the columns lifted off the ground and soared into the sky, while the other drilled downward and splashed a huge cloud of dust into the dark knights’ faces. Devin and Palin covered their eyes, coughing and gagging as they backed away.

  Elam lunged for Palin and threw him down. Wrapping his arms around the knight’s sword hand, he slammed the mail-clad arm against the ground, then pried the sword free and jumped up with the hilt in his grip. Setting his feet, he pointed the blade at the pair of slayers as they continued to cough uncontrollably.

  More dust erupted from the lower end of the spinning column, blending russet streaks into the crimson cyclone until it looked like a swirling pinwheel of flesh and blood. The streaks solidified and coiled into a tight cylinder. As the spinning slowed, a man’s body took shape, his hands at his sides and his eyes tightly shut.

  The turning stopped. The man gasped a deep breath, then opened his eyes and looked around frantically. Spotting Hannah, he swept her up and began to run.

  Still holding Palin’s sword, Elam rushed after them. Hannah thrashed in the man’s arms, screaming, “We can run faster if you will let me go!” She jabbed her elbow into his ribs until he stumbled and dropped her. After toppling over her body, he flopped face first into a patch of dandelions.

  Elam hustled to the man and rolled him over. He seemed familiar somehow, and since he had come out of the Ovulum, he likely wasn’t an enemy. “Are you all right?” Elam asked in modern English.

  “We have to escape,” the man replied in Old English. “The effects of the gas on the slayers will not last long.”

  Elam and Hannah each grabbed one of the man’s arms and helped him to his feet. Elam glanced back at the two knights. The slayers were slowly rising, still coughing, but not as vigorously. “We must make haste,” the man continued. “Are there any rapid conveyances?”

  Hannah nodded. “Yes, I have horses.”

  “In the pasture down the road!” Elam swept his arm forward. “Come on!”

  The trio dashed away from the cottage, scaled a low fence, and sprinted across a grassy field. When the horses came into view, Hannah pulled on Elam’s sleeve, slowing him down. “Careful, or we will frighten them.”

  With Palin’s sword still in hand, Elam walked briskly, alternately glancing at several horses grazing about fifty paces in front, then behind him at the slayers who followed at a distance. “Can you ride bareback?” he asked Hannah.

  “Yes. Can you?”

  “I think so.” Elam turned to the stranger. “Do you ride?”

  The man nodded. “Yes, but never in this world.”

  Elam propped the sword over his shoulder. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I will explain soon enough.”

  “Wait here.” Hannah strode ahead. As she approached the horses, she held out her hand toward a bay mare and spoke as though she were addressing another human. “Legossi,” she said, returning to her Scottish-soaked, modern dialect, “we are in great danger. I need you and Hartanna and Clefspeare to carry us to safety. Will you do it?”

  The mare replied with a lengthy bob of her head. Two other horses, a dapple-gray mare and a chestnut stallion, both nodded in the same way. Hannah sidled up to the stallion. “I will take Clefspeare,” she said, switching back to old English. “Elam, you ride the bay mare. You” she pointed at the stranger “you can ride the dapple gray.”

  Elam checked the slayers’ progress as they crossed the field. Palin, now brandishing Excalibur and running ahead of his injured master, would be at their throats in seconds. Elam dropped his captured sword and set his hands in a cradle near the ground. “Hannah! Quick! I’ll boost you!”

  “No need for boosting!” Taking a running start, Hannah leaped over his hands and vaulted onto the stallion. Then, snatching Elam’s collar, she hauled him to the bay mare and lifted him high. Elam grabbed the horse’s neck, swung his leg over her back, and righted himself. The stranger leaped onto the dapple-gray mare and slid deftly into place.

  Now only a dozen paces away, Palin charged toward them, Devin’s sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

  Giving Clefspeare a firm kick, Hannah shouted. “Let us fly!”

  The stallion bolted, and the mares galloped after him. Elam squeezed the mare with his knees to steady himself, but sudden pain made him lurch. He clutched his upper arm. Palin’s dagger! The jagged blade had penetrated deeply, probably to the bone. He jerked the dagger out and slung it to the ground. Pain ripped through his neck and down his spine. Blood flowed freely, coating his arm in seconds.

  He glanced back. Palin was pointing at the ground with the sword Elam had left behind. Elam grimaced. A blood trail! But he couldn’t stop to make a bandage. Hannah and the stranger were already too far ahead. Leaning forward and hanging on with his good arm, he could only watch the tall grass zip by underneath while blood dripped from his fingers. He might as well make a sign that said, “This way to the dragon!”

  He tried to pull the mare to th
e right, hoping to steer his pursuers away, but she stayed on course behind the pair in front. Closing his eyes and laying his head on the horse’s mane, he focused on enduring the escape. The mare’s hoofbeats rattled his brain, and each jolt brought a new stab of agony.

  Soon, the thunder of other hoofbeats grew closer, so close they seemed to hammer the ground in a stride-for-stride gallop next to him. Elam clutched the horse’s mane. Was Devin about to grab him? Too groggy to sit up, he tried to kick his horse, but he lurched to the side and fell. Strong arms caught him, lifted him into the air, and set him in place again on a different mount. A gentle male voice drifted into his ear. “Hang on, young man. Keep your courage. I will let you rest in a moment.”

  When the horse finally stopped, another pair of hands grasped his uninjured arm as he slid slowly downward. Hannah’s voice lilted in his ears, her Scottish accent spicing her Old English. “I will lay him down! Move the horses away! Quickly now.”

  Elam fluttered his eyelids, catching glimpses of tall blades of grass next to his cheek, Hannah’s worried face on one side of his body and the stranger from the Ovulum on the other. Every image seemed filtered by a dark screen. Even the sun wore a basaltic mask that coated the skies with gray. With pain roaring from arm to arm, he clenched his teeth, unable to put his torment into words.

  The man’s voice drifted by, soft as a phantom’s whisper. “Can you stop the bleeding?”

  Hannah’s sharp reply drilled into his ears. “Give me your shirt!”

  New throbs shot through Elam’s brain, shocking him to a more wakeful state. He peeked through his partially closed eyelids. Hannah, dim and blurry, wrapped a shirt around his injured arm. After tying it in place, she pressed her hand on the wound.

  Elam moaned. The pain was worse than the sting of Nabal’s cruelest whippings.

  Hannah’s voice returned, now more soothing. “Shhh. I have to put pressure on it or you are likely to bleed to death.”

  The stranger, now in a singlet undershirt, knelt at Elam’s other side and mopped his brow with a torn sleeve. “My dear lady, you seem to have experience with healing fallen warriors.”

  Hannah kept her head turned toward Elam. “And you seem to have experience with heroic rescues. You remind me of a very dear friend of mine, an old friend from long ago.”

  “How kind of you to say so. Was your friend a hero?”

  Hannah’s eyes misted. “To me, he was much more than a hero much, much more.”

  “I see.” He angled his head toward Elam but kept his eyes fixed on her. “Was this hero a former flame?”

  A sad smile wrinkled Hannah’s lips. “You have no idea how well you have described him.”

  The man’s eyebrows lifted. “Perhaps I do.”

  “No,” Hannah said, sighing deeply, “you do not.”

  The man turned his cloth over and dabbed Elam’s forehead again. “Have other flames come to warm the embers this love left behind?”

  “What?” Hannah glared at him. “I would expect better manners from a man who sprang forth from the Ovulum!”

  The man lowered his head. “Forgive me, dear lady. The Eye of the Oracle commanded me to ask that very question.”

  As Hannah’s glare softened, she sighed. “Well, if the Eye bids me to answer . . .” She shook her head slowly, and her voice pitched slightly higher. “My embers are cold, and they are slowly crumbling to dust.” She yanked a blade of grass away from Elam’s cheek. “I do not allow even a spark to approach them. No one will ever rekindle my coals.”

  “May I venture to describe this lost flame of yours?”

  Hannah sniffed, her chin trembling. “If you must.”

  The man took a deep breath and spoke with a poetic cadence. “Embodying the spirit of a paladin, he ignited the passions of your heart. Flashing the courage of a warrior, he burned away all your fears. Massaging with the gentleness of spring sunshine, he warmed your scales on cold, anxious nights.”

  “Well done. It almost seems that you ” Hannah clenched a handful of grass. “Did you say, ‘scales’?”

  “Yes. And if he is the fiery romantic that I suspect, he probably told you that he would eventually come back.” He gazed directly into Hannah’s eyes. “Is that true . . . Thigocia?”

  Hannah’s lips quivered. Still keeping her hand on Elam’s arm, she leaned closer to the stranger and gazed into his eyes. After a few seconds, a tear trickled down her cheek as she whispered, “My . . . my husband?”

  He took the ends of her fingers into his hand and guided her around Elam. “We said, ‘till death do us part,’ but even death could not keep our love apart forever.”

  “Makaidos!” Hannah leaped into his arms. “My darling husband! It is you! It is really you!”

  Holding her close in his lap, he stroked her silky hair. “My human name is Timothy, but I will answer to any name you wish to give me.” He gently pushed her toward Elam. “You had better tend to your patient.”

  “Oh! Yes! Of course!” She stepped over Elam and pressed down on his arm.

  Elam grimaced, but the pain wasn’t quite as bad as before.

  “How did you do it?” she asked, a broad smile stretching her cheeks. “I mean, how did you come back to life?”

  Timothy mopped Elam’s brow again. “God preserved my spirit in the Ovulum, and I spent over a thousand years there learning from Enoch. He said that someday God would create a new body for me from the dust of the ground. When the Ovulum broke open, Enoch closed his eyes and said, ‘It is time.’ Then, he disappeared.” Timothy laid a hand on his chest. “And now I am here, back with my beloved.”

  Hannah reached across Elam and took Timothy’s hand, drawing it close. She kissed his fingers and rubbed the back of his hand across her cheek. “What happened to Enoch?”

  “I am concerned about him,” he said. “God took him from the earth long ago, and he resided in the Ovulum as a prophetic eye for thousands of years. But he knew he would be leaving, and he said he did not know where God would take him next.”

  Hannah released the pressure on Elam’s arm and slowly peeled the blood-soaked shirt away from the wound. “It is just oozing now.” She patted Elam on the cheek. “You are certainly a fast healer.”

  Elam forced a smile. “Must be from clean living.” He rose to a sitting position, blinking at the beams of sunlight filtering through the high treetops. Two horses stood in a shallow stream that trickled over their hooves, while the third nosed through a patch of clover next to a nearby oak tree. He raised his good arm. “Help me up. Devin will follow my blood trail, so we have to keep moving.”

  “There is no hurry.” Hannah rose and pulled Elam to his feet. “With that bad leg of his, he could not possibly keep up.”

  “He was a knight,” Elam countered. “He and Palin know how to mount and ride horses.”

  “An excellent point.” Hannah brushed off her dress. “We will follow the stream to the River Clyde. If we can make it there by nightfall, we should be able to erase our trail in the water under the cover of darkness. Then we can follow the river to Uddingston.”

  While Hannah gathered the horses, Elam picked up the drenched bandage and wadded it into a ball. A drop of blood slowly gathered at the end of a sleeve and dripped to the ground. “I have a better idea.” He forked his fingers at Timothy and Hannah. “You two can go to Uddingston. I’ll lead Devin away with a trail of blood.”

  “No,” Hannah said, now riding on Clefspeare. “If he catches you ”

  “The boy is right.” Timothy turned to Elam. “You must separate from us. Now that Thigocia and I are together, you are finished here. Enoch told me that your next assignment is to find Valcor, another dragon turned human. Although he fled from Europe for a time, he now lives in Glastonbury, England, under the name of Patrick Nathanson. You will learn how you must aid him as you so faithfully aided Thigocia.”

  “My name is Hannah now,” she corrected. “And you will need to learn the new ton
gue quickly.”

  Elam shook his head and chuckled under his breath. “Both of you could use a lot of work with your speech. Just relax, and don’t try so hard. I mean, you sound as stiff as dragons’ armor.”

  Timothy smiled. “Is that so,” he said in modern English, his words lilting with the rhythm of a perfect Scottish accent. “You’d be surprised at what a man can learn trapped inside a glass egg for hundreds of years. I just breathed the Scottish air for an hour, and I’m already a Scotsman!”

  “Excellent!” Hannah clapped her hands and laughed. “You even used contractions. I always found those difficult to master.”

  A low rumble vibrated the ground. Elam strained to listen. Hoofbeats? If so, they were still far away, but closing fast. He waved toward the gray mare. “Timothy! Hurry! Whichever way you go, I’ll ride in the opposite direction.”

  Timothy boosted Elam onto the bay mare, then leaped aboard the dapple gray’s back. “I trust we will see you again, Elam.”

  “If it is in my power.” Pressing the horse’s shoulder with his good hand, Elam steadied himself and nodded to both former dragons. His throat caught, and tears welled in his eyes. “It has been an honor to serve you. May the Lord Christ be with you always.”

  Hannah rode to his side and patted Elam’s horse. “Legossi, stay with him and keep him safe.” Legossi gave her a horsey snort and nodded.

  Hannah pulled Elam’s sleeve. “Farewell, brave warrior.” She kissed him on the hand. “Thank you for watching over me.”

  With a firm kick into Clefspeare’s side, Hannah rode into the creek and galloped downstream.

  Timothy guided his mare next to Elam’s. “You recognized me all along, didn’t you?”

  Elam shrugged. “It’s been a long time. I wasn’t sure enough to say anything.”

  “I understand.” He lowered his head briefly before returning his gaze to Elam. “Pray for me. I must tell my beloved about Roxil. As far as I know, she is still trapped in that God-forsaken town. And I also must search for the spirit of my father. I refuse to believe he is really that deceiver who indwells the body of Arramos.”