Dreams of the Oracle

Chapter 35

He took a step forward. Suddenly, everything around him began racing ahead. He heard a wet step behind him. Even as his mind registered the sound her heard a high human voice. The voice was muffled but there was an edge to it like the cry of a bird of prey. He was just turning his head when he felt it.

An ice cold blade. It was like being stabbed in the back with an icicle. All at once his body was no longer functioning on reasoned decisions. After years of training his body could react in an instant to a threat. He didn't have to think his muscles already knew what to do.

As he was registering the fact that he had been stabbed by a shard of ice his right arm had already drawn his dagger and he was spinning. As his mind realized that the cold was spreading across his back his left hand was knocking away the hand of his opponent and grabbing her shoulder. As he recognized that the coldness was following the painted lines of the warding his dagger was already plunging forward. There one last shock of ice cold magic against the skin of his back that made him catch his breath and his eyes focused on what he had just stabbed.

It was a woman. She was soaked and muddied from the storm but she was a woman. Her eyes were wide enough that the eye white were almost glowing in the dim light. Her mouth was wide open as she gasped for air. Ashur's own eyes widened as the import of what he had done settled in. He looked down at the hand, his hand, that was holding the knife. The blade was buried to the hilt in her chest. He looked up again at her pale face as her mouth opened and closed. With dawning horror he pulled the dagger free and she fell to the ground.

All thoughts of the Rashaka only a few feet away were forgotten. Ashur stepped to the woman's side and dropped his dagger. She was trembling slightly in the rain. Her mouth was still opening and closing. Ashur tore off a part of his own sleeve and pressed it down hard against the wound. The wound he had inflicted. He looked down into her wide eyes and he knew that it was already too late,

"Who are you?" he asked.

She blinked and her mouth closed for a moment.

"Who are you?" repeated Ashur more urgently, "what are you doing here?"

Her mouth began to move again and Ashur bent close to hear her voice over the storm.

"...Cold...it's so cold...," she whispered.

"Who are you?" asked Ashur again, more gently.

"Its...gone...they took it away."

"Who took what away? Who are you lady?"

Her wide eyes suddenly looked up at him with perfect awareness. Dark pupils framed by white sparked with sudden intelligence,

"Me?...nobody, I'm...nobody at all."

Ashur's brow furrowed at that response. Then she trembled one last time and was still. Her wide eyes stared up at the sky. He watched a raindrop land on her left eye and when she didn't blink he turned his head away. Swallowing he reached up and closed her eyes with his hand. He knelt over her for a time. At first he was looking away into nothing. Then he turned his head and looked down to face what he had done.

He didn't know how long he knelt like that. He didn't know how long his eyes slid across the pale curves of the woman's face. He didn't know how long he stared at her muddied golden hair and her closed eyes. He didn't know how many times he repeated her cryptic last words in his head. He didn't know how many times he rewatched the light of life fade from her eyes.

He did remember hearing the wailing cry of the Rashaka dying behind him. He remembered hearing footsteps smacking into the muddy ground. He remembered the change in the sound of the rain as two men walked up to him on either side. He remembered the wet sound of one of them crouching beside him. He remembered another flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder in the sky.