Secret of Pax Tharkas by Douglas Niles

Author:Douglas Niles [Niles, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780786962693
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2012-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

THE ORACLE

Harn Poleaxe approached the small hut with a measure of trepidation. He hadn’t seen the oracle for more than two years, but he well remembered the frisson of mingled terror and excitement that his last encounter with the old Neidar crone had provoked.

Yet he was returning in triumph, he told himself. He held the Bluestone wedge in his left hand as he raised his right and knocked, hesitantly, at the flimsy door.

“Enter, Harn Poleaxe!” came the command from within the hut.

Grimacing, the big Neidar tried to suppress the trembling that shook his hand as he pressed against the door. He ducked his head to pass underneath the low frame. The interior of the one-room house, not surprisingly, was dark, for the one who lived there had no need of illumination.

“I have returned, Mother Oracle,” Harn said, bowing humbly. “I take it you have been informed of my arrival?”

The old dwarf woman who sat in the shadowy room uttered a dry bark of laughter. “No one spoke to me,” she said. “But I knew you had come to Hillhome. And I know, too, that you bring the Bluestone from Kayolin.”

Harn shuddered at the evidence of the oracle’s far-seeing powers then quickly extended the heavy wedge of stone. As his eyes adjusted to the murk, he watched as she reached out her arthritic hands to take the talisman, lifting it easily into her lap.

The oracle had been a very old woman when she first came to Hillhome, some ten years earlier. To Harn, who had not seen her since he had departed for Kayolin two years ago, she looked the very same as when he had left, which was the same as when she had first wandered up the hill road into the town. Her hair was white and thin, hanging in a scraggly tangle around her round, wrinkled face. Her eyes were open but milky white, proof of the blindness that had long afflicted her. Her shoulders were rounded, and her posture, as she sat in a small rocking chair, stooped and frail looking. She wore a worn cloak of pale brown, patched in many places. Her feet were encased in soft moccasins.

But her voice was strong, and so were her hands. He watched as she hefted the heavy Bluestone, feeling the smoothness along both sides. She raised the artifact to her face and smelled the stone, running it along her wrinkled cheek, holding it to her ear as if she expected it to speak to her. For all Harn knew, she did hear something there. In any event, she issued a cackle of laughter and lowered the object into her lap.

“You have done well,” she said. “I believed in you, but even so, when I sent you to gain this stone, I knew you would face many obstacles. I was not certain you would succeed.”

Harn lowered his face, pleased by her praise and her acknowledgment of the severity of his challenge. “I had to live among the mountain dwarves for a long time,” he admitted.

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