Oracle of Life by Katherine D. Graham

Author:Katherine D. Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Katherine D. Graham

CHAPTER TEN

Constant throbbing pain in Nariah’s wounded leg began as only an annoyance. As the carriage wheels snagged stones or sank into the dirt road, each jarring movement sent a spike of agony all the way down to her toes. She tried to lie down with her back to the floor and her feet propped on top of the seats, but that offered only the briefest breath of relief.

The enchanted coach and its other-worldly pair of horses went faster than a standard coach by at least two to three times, but the speed only made the carriage jerk harder when a wheel struck something. Nariah could hardly stand any position in the coach. She needed to tend to her wound, but had neither the skill nor the strength to do so. At least the bleeding had slowed.

Sleep tempted her with thoughts of escape from her physical distress, but rewarded her with feverish, destruction-laced nightmares instead. The king’s dying words haunted her. It made no sense—a goddess of Mercy advocating for the destruction of an entire kingdom in order to purge a tainted few. What could have stained her people so badly that even Mercy had no grace left to show their broken souls?

Even Nariah, after all she had been through, believed they could be different.

Didn’t she?

The golden guard’s damnation of her calling, her very identity, stood out sharply in her mind. The doubts he’d sown in her thoughts sliced through her just as painfully as the wound he’d left in her leg.

Her stomach grumbled and her bladder ached. Without remembering which words Karma had used to start the horses on their path, though, she dared not stop or get out of the carriage to relieve herself or forage for food. Not that she could have stopped a pair of magically-guided horses anyway though, she reckoned.

Throwing open the curtains, she was relieved to see that they were rounding the outskirts of the Gordospian woods to the southeast of Frierfeld. These horses were smart, she gave them that. Normal carriages and horses would be foolish to attempt a passing through the Gordospian woods during the day, when the beasts ran rampant and bandits lay in wait for any passersby.

At night, though, when the goddesses’ druantia guardian brought the trees to life with her flute, the beasts of the daylight slept, and the bandits dared not show their faces. The druantia judged the heart, the legends said. Wicked souls would be banished from the forest in an instant, forced from an unlucky person’s body at the command of the druantia’s flute.

The only way through the horned maiden of the woods’ lands at night was to convince her of the purity behind your heart’s greatest desire. If it was truly found pure in her eyes, she would grant safety within a village of fairies for rest, and safe passage night and day for the remainder of the blessed traveler’s trip.

But what was Nariah’s greatest desire?

To be free? To win back the respect and adoration

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