04 Frostfell by Forgotten Realms

Author:Forgotten Realms [Realms, Forgotten]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-04-10T16:07:59.361000+00:00

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Amira's eyes snapped open and she sat up. She was still in the cavern of Hro'nyewachu. The stone pedestal, still drenched in blood, was not far away. The remains of the deer carcass and the heart were gone. How long she had lain on the stone floor, how long she had... dreamed, seen, whatever it had been. But her hair was dry, and the blood from her grisly meal felt hard and dry on her skin. You found what you sought? Amira turned. The oracle was standing behind her, the pale eyes no longer lit with hunger but with... what? Amira wondered. Was that sympathy? "Was it...?" Amira said. Her throat felt raw. Burned. "Was it real? What I saw? What I heard?" The oracle canted her head-a thoroughly inhuman gesture that reminded Amira of a bird. The dreamroad, she said, her lips still not moving, the voice coming straight to Amira's mind, the waking world, sleeping, waking... who is to say where reality begins and ends? The same mind that sees the world around you, that loves and hates and wars and creates, is the same mind that dreams. Why cling to one and discard the other? "So Arantar, Khasoreth... Gaugan, all of it. I saw it as it happened? It wasn't some dream inspired by the belkagen's fireside tales." The words of a belkagen spoken by fire are not to be taken lightly. A smile flickered across the oracle's face, faint and fleeting, but in the instant she saw it, Amira thought it looked a little sad. It has been many turnings of the world since Arantar last came to me. This world has not seen his like since, nor will it again. Amira considered all she had seen, and the urgency hit her all at once. "I must go," she said. "Jalan..." The scion of Arantar is in grave danger, said the oracle. His life teeters on the precipice. Amira stood and brushed the sand and grit off her bare skin. She looked up at the oracle, and she was struck by how tall the oracle really was. She would not have looked down upon Gyaidun. She would have towered over him. You have a cold road ahead of you, said the oracle. Out of affection for a friend long gone, I grant you one last question. It came to Amira at once, the only question worth asking, the only answer she needed. "How do I beat them?" The oracle smiled, and again it was the hungry gaze of the predator. The Witness Tree. There, all will be decided. Beyond that, I give you no assurances. Death and life will meet. Only those who surrender will triumph. "Surrender?" said Amira. " 'Death and life will meet?' What does that mean?" The oracle's smiled broadened, her full lips pulling back over teeth that were pointed and sharp, fangs that seemed to glisten in the cavern's blood red light. "Never mind," said Amira. She looked around.

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