An Oracle’s Baggage

The warning horn sounded again, relayed from a lookout closer to camp.

Keme tore through the lodge entrance before its echo died. The elders followed. Tawa collapsed into a coal-bright spark and streaked after them through the opening.

Outside, the camp erupted into motion.

There was no panic. No one screamed or shouted. No one ran without purpose. Fires disappeared beneath layers of dirt. Support poles came free and painted hides folded into bundles small enough to carry on your back.

An entire lodge vanished while I was still trying to pull on pants beneath the blanket.

The Church built walls made to last hundreds of years and called it civilization.

The elves erased a village before I finished dressing myself.

The pants stopped several inches above my ankles, pinched at the thighs, and resisted whenever I bent my knees.

Nimiwa looked at them.

“They fit.”

“I may prefer a loincloth.”

She frowned. “We have no time.” She stepped out of the lodge and said, “Stop being difficult. Come.”

“Where?”

“My lodge.”

“I thought this was your lodge.”

“This is for wounded.”

“That explains the hospitality.”

She grabbed my wrist and pulled me outside.

The camp occupied a small clearing surrounded by trees and walls of woven brush. It was very well hidden and I doubted I could have found it from ten paces away.

Moonlight barely reached the forest floor and any fires that were burning had been snuffed out.

Nimiwa slipped between the trees without slowing.

I tripped over the first root almost immediately.

She looked back.

“Why you stop?”

“A tree attacked me.”

“It did not move.”

“I know. That makes it more impressive, right?”

She stared for a moment, then seemed to understand the problem.

“You cannot see.”

Nimiwa stepped in front with her back facing me, took both my wrists, and placed my hands against her hips.

“Step where I step.”

Her waist was narrow enough that my palms nearly spanned it. My hands sank into the warm skin above her loincloth, and she had placed them there without the slightest sign that she understood what she had done. Apparently, nakedness embarrassed her when a ritual required looking. Practical contact carried no such meaning.

A less principled man could have enjoyed the arrangement. After nearly helping sentence her to a slow death, I had recently acquired one.

I removed my hands and reached for hers instead.

She pulled away immediately and spun around muttering something in elvish.

“No. Hands must be free,” she said.

“Of course they must,” I said, sensing her growing annoyance.

She returned my hands to her hip. I moved both hands from her hips to the belt around her waist.

“I think this is better.”

She shrugged and continued.

After taking a few steps, the belt loosened, and her loincloth began descending with it.

I returned my hands to her hips.

I needed more practice with principles.

Following her was easier, though not dignified. Nimiwa ducked beneath branches that struck me across the face and stepped over roots that seemed to rise specifically as I moved.

“You walk loudly,” she whispered. “Be more quiet.”

She made a frustrated sound but slowed enough for me to keep pace.

Her lodge stood at the deepest end of the hollow. It was smaller than the previous one and covered in painted symbols of the sun, moon, stars, animals and figures with too many limbs.

Nimiwa ducked inside. I followed and stopped.

There was almost nowhere to step.

Bundles of paper filled woven baskets. Painted hides hung from every support pole. Bone tablets lay stacked beside clay jars containing feathers, powders, dried plants and several things I preferred not to identify.

Knotted cords stretched between the poles in patterns that resembled constellations. Small wooden figures of Tawa and Hanwi occupied a shelf beside bowls of ash and polished stones.

Every available surface carried writing.

Some of it was Elvish. Other symbols belonged to languages I had seen on smuggled relics and temple fragments. One hide displayed crude human script copied again and again, each version slightly different.

Nimiwa began gathering scrolls.

“This is all yours?”

“Yes.”

“How much of it do you remember?”

Nimiwa paused with a bundle of scrolls against her chest.

“Enough to know much is missing.”

I lifted a page covered in tiny symbols and corrections. Several different scripts crowded the edges, as though generations of oracles had corrected the same page.

She snatched it out of my hand and continued packing. “Please don’t touch,” she said.

“I think you may actually know what you’re talking about.”

Her shoulders stiffened and her face became tense.

“That was insult?”

“No. It was acknowledgment.”

“Your acknowledgment sounds hurtful.”

She studied my face, searching for whatever cruelty I had hidden inside the words.

There wasn’t any, which seemed to trouble her even more.

“I have much to learn,” she said as she forced another painted hide into an already stuffed leather carrying sack. The contents were stretching the tightly woven seams.

“How long have you been studying these?”

“One hundred eighty-three years.”

I looked at her again.

“Exactly how old are you?”

“Two hundred and six.”

“And you are still considered young?”

“I am youngest oracle.”

She tried to tighten the cord around the sack but it slipped from her fingers. Three scrolls rolled across the floor.

I picked one up.

“I assumed revelations would be easier to pack.”

“Oracle is honor, not burden,” she said as she shoved the scrolls back into place. “Moving is a burden.”

Another lodge folded outside with a hard wooden thunk. Nimiwa glanced toward the sound and packed faster.

“Others carry food. Tools. Wounded. I carry songs and rituals.” She gestured toward the crowded lodge. “Everyone has role.”

Looking around the lodge, it was easy to imagine how she spent her days. Reading old texts, adding new interpretations and speaking to gods while everyone else hunted, fought and kept the tribe safe. She was not foolish. She was a scholar in a tribe that survived by moving.

Something small fell from the sack as Nimiwa tried to lift it. She gasped and dropped to her knees. I picked it up.

It was a crude book stitched together with cord. Human words filled one side of each page. Symbols crowded the other, surrounded by corrections and small painted illustrations.

“Is this a dictionary?”

“Human word book.”

“So yes, dictionary.”

She repeated it carefully.

“Dic-tion-ar-y.”

“That may have been the fastest thing you have understood since kidnapping me.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“That was insult.”

“Yes.”

She grabbed the book from my hands and tied it securely to the belt at her waist.

“I was in a hurry when I find you. It stays with me now.”

An elvish warrior shouted somewhere beyond the clearing. Nimiwa packed faster.

“You have dealt with humans in the past?”

“Yes. Traders. Intruders. Church men.”

She continued packing, only glancing over occasionally to make sure I hadn't taken anything.

“So you know about the Church?”

“Humans came before. Cut trees near river. We left dried meat, salt, hides.”

She tucked another scroll into the sack.

“White-robed men came later. Watched us. Asked questions. Then stopped.”

“They didn’t stop. They learned enough.”

Her hands stopped packing.

“Paladins. Clerics. We wounded them. Clerics made them stand again.”

“So your first attempt at diplomacy taught them where to send an army.”

Another warning passed through the trees. This time a sharp series of elven cries instead of a horn.

Nimiwa caught a strip of cloth between her teeth and tore it in half.

“You have a knife,” I said.

She spoke with it still in her mouth.

“Knife is packed.”

She tied one strip around my wrist, covering one of the darker painted symbols.

“What is this for?”

“Church eyes.”

Her phrasing was vague, but the concern behind it was not. She tied the second strip around my other wrist.

“We leave before they find camp,” Nimiwa said.

“Your people seem aware.”

“I must pack faster.”

She started tying hides to the sack, unable to shove anything more into it.

“You’re taking all of it?”

“All is needed.”

“Then the Church may catch us while you decide which century of notes to abandon.”

A flush darkened the tips of her ears.

“I abandon none.”

A painted hide slipped from her hands and opened across the floor.

A human figure stood at its center.

There was no divine mark on its chest. Instead, symbols surrounded it. Orange flame, blue water, black feathers, green branches and silver crescents. Painted lines connected the figure to every one of them.

Its outline was red.

“What is this?”

A shout erupted outside, followed by a heavy mechanical snap. An iron bolt screamed over the clearing and burst above the trees.

White fire spread across the sky.

Darkness vanished and was replaced with blinding light.

I recognized the weapon. The Imperial Order used it to strip darkness from forests, tunnels and city alleys, burning threats away before sending soldiers inside.

Outside, a human voice carried through the camp.

“Demi-humans sighted! Paladins forward!”

Another mechanical crack sounded.

This bolt struck the woven brush surrounding the clearing and burst into white flame. The damp branches burned anyway, holy fire crawling across them faster than ordinary oil.

Through the widening gaps, I saw the Church formation.

Paladins advanced first, swords drawn behind overlapping walls of golden light. Arbalest Zealots followed inside their protection, winding their weapons for another volley. Two Clerics in white robes walked behind them with maces held ready.

Farther back, blue light pulsed from a reinforced wagon.

Another Life Mage.

Nimiwa pulled the painted hide toward herself, but I caught one last glimpse of the red figure surrounded by the marks of many gods.

“Is this a Redborn?”

“No time.”

A Paladin advanced behind his Aegis Shield, its golden wall crushing through the outer barricade.

Crossbows rose behind him.

Nimiwa stepped in front of her scrolls and lowered her staff toward the opening.

I looked around for a weapon.

“Apparently,” I said, “it’s time to go.”