The silence following the oracle’s single-word prophecy was…well, it was bloody annoying. No more words came, andDamien could only lift a hand and poke himself in the chest. “Me? That’s the answer? No creative epithet or flowery illusion? Just me?”
“Just you. Man, even though I knew you were going to look at me like that, I’m surprised—you really should be totally thrilled.”
“Well, you didn’t shroud it in any kind of mystery! After all your explanation and warning, you just—youtoldme! Gods, am I going to fuck it up now? Am I going to do it all wrong and ruin everything? Is fate going to reverse itself because I know?” Damien frantically pulled at the neck of his tunic to cool down despite the blustery winds.
The oracle placed a single hand on his shoulder, its weight instantly calming him. “Do you even know the question?”
Damien’s breath hitched. “I…no?”
The oracle grinned, using Damien to push themselves back up to stand. “Maybe this’ll be my new thing. Answers, but no questions.”
Watching the oracle walk away, disbelief quickly replaced itself with indignation as he scrambled to his feet. “But I thought you had to know the question to be able to answer it. If I never ask it, how can you possibly give me an answer?”
“Oh, you will ask, it just comes in the, hmm…” The oracle thought and then shrugged. “Well, if you’ll excuse a little more mystery, it comes in the epilogue, I guess.”
Damien had no idea what that meant, and he called after the oracle, but he was already headed back down the stairs.
CHAPTER 12
SOMETIMES GREATNESS IS NOT THRUST UPON ONE BUT PLACED GENTLY ATOP ONE’S HEAD
Amma ran a finger along the stupidly-named pendant’s most jagged edge. It didn’t reallyfeelcursed, though she wasn’t sure she would know if a thing was. When she moved it under the fading light, she caught a reflection that looked just like Damien, but he hadn’t yet come out of the tent.
Stuffing it back into her pouch, Amma wandered across the oracle’s encampment with Katz trailing behind. The elf had put away her scrolls and was stirring the large pot over the fire, a number of bowls stacked before her. When she saw Amma, she snapped her fingers at the skinny man and told him to take down Amma’s prophecy.
Geoff scurried over, digging out a parchment from a deep pocket, checking, and then trading it off for another until he found a blank one. He felt around on his person, and Amma tapped her own ear. Geoff plucked the reed out from behind his where he’d stored it.
“Tell meexactlyhow it was said to you.”
“Misery personified shall descend upon a winged beast to unknowingly rescue her own undoing, but when the pieces are reforged, the downfall of the hallowed son, the chosen, and the heartless mother is inevitable.” Amma blinked, surprised at how easily she repeated the prophecy she didn’t even understand. She stuck out her tongue and tried to take a look at what she would assume to be arcana roving over it.
Geoff was already walking away from her, but she hurried after, catching how the writing on the scroll glowed. “Hey, uh, you wouldn’t happen to know what that means, would you?”
He was rolling up the bit of parchment and disappeared into a tiny tent, calling back, “Not a clue.”
Val’tiel was still invested in her stew, and Katz was slowly lowering himself onto a rock to rest from all the sighing he’d been doing, so Amma followed Geoff into the tent.
Beyond the canvas entrance, a cave carved out of the mountain led downward at a gentle slope. Lit by glowing stones, row after row of tightly wrapped scrolls were nestled into natural outcroppings in the rock walls, seven stuffed here, another three there, a single one rolled just thin enough to fit into a narrow hole right above her head. The air was dry and smelled so like the Grand Athenaeum that Amma fell still and could do nothing but take a deep breath.
Geoff was skittering away down the cave when Amma opened her eyes again, and an idea formed in her mind. She still didn’t know the prophecy that Damien had once been told, the one he was toiling under and didn’t seem to want her to hear. But if she accidentally read it…
“Geoff,” she called, hurrying after. “Do you haveallof the prophecies here?”
Startled as if he’d already forgotten she existed, he stopped short. “Only the pending ones,” he finally said, a little shake to his voice. “We burn them after they’ve come true. What good’s a prophecy after it’s already happened, you know? Nobody believes you at that point.” He was slipping Amma’s prophecy into a crack alongside another rolled-up scroll.
“What does that other one say?”
“I shouldn’t tell you…” Geoff tapped his reed to his lips then dropped his voice to a whisper. “Well, I can’t tell you the exact wordage, but a knight of Valcord recently visited on a quest todiscover how best to serve his god. The oracle told him to go cleanse a temple, basically, but the poor guy thought the whole thing was a lewd euphemism, and you know how holy knights can be, so he got real nervous and ran off.”
Beyond where he stood, there were more crevasses but no more parchment. She took a few steps backward and pointed to a high-up cluster of scrolls. “And these?”
“Last year’s big batch,” he said, looking particularly proud. “Took some of those myself directly from the oracle. They’re separated into ones requested by visitors and the oracle’s dreams.”
“So,”—she stepped backward and Geoff followed—“if I wanted to see something from, say, eleven-ish years ago, I would stop…”
Geoff watched her continue toward the cave’s entrance, then held up a hand. “Right about there. I wasn’t around then though.”
“But surely you’ve read all of these,” she nodded as if it had to be true.
