The Spring Answers

We made haste for White Reed Spring to the north. Nimiwa slowly gained her strength as we went. For the first hundred paces or so she used her staff more as a walking stick than a holy artifact. I carried her sack, doing my best to keep up. She kept trying to take it from me but my pride as a man wouldn't allow it. By the third time that I took a tumble, urgency finally convinced me to surrender it.

After she reclaimed the sack, Tawa returned to riding on it. His flames brightened as Nimiwa’s legs gradually strengthened. I was beginning to suspect the gods did not merely speak through her. She may have had the fate of both the tribe, and the gods they worshiped tied to her.

The mark on my palm remained warm. Hanwi had drawn enough power through the sword to extinguish it inside the shrine. I could feel the power returning slowly.

I followed Nimiwa through paths that seemed more like random forest than trail. We climbed over fallen trees, crossed narrow streams and forced our way through thick underbrush. No moonlight reached the path beneath the trees.

After what felt like hours, I asked, “How far?”

“Close.”

“You said that at the last stream.”

“It was close to that stream.”

Her blue eye had begun glowing again. The light returned in the same weak rhythm it had followed at the shrine. “Your eye. Does that mean Hanwi is near?”

Nimiwa hesitated. “Yes. Or her—” Her ears twitched toward the trees. She pushed me down and crouched beside me. Human ears were not that useful. I heard nothing until two elven scouts emerged from the darkness. After a fast conversation in Elvish, Nimiwa motioned to follow.

Eventually we made it to the reeds of White Reed Spring and the steady hum of low chanting filled the air. Blue light flickered a bit farther ahead.

Nimiwa lifted her head. “Moon Guardians.”

I pushed through the reeds and entered a wide clearing. Stalks resembling icicles jutted from the ground around a spring at the center of the clearing. Their leaves reflected the faint moonlight, making the water appear brighter than the night sky above it. The tribe had made camp along the banks.

Wounded elves lay on makeshift stretchers beside the water. Moon Guardians knelt among them, one hand pressed over a wound while their staves hovered above the stretchers. Blue light weakly emitted from the tips as they continued to chant.

It wasn’t powerful but it was enough. One elf whose chest had been burnt by an Arbalest bolt started breathing without blood dripping from his mouth.

I wondered if Hanwi’s blessing had returned and if the power I gave her shrine played any part.

Keme approached before I could dwell on the thought. He crossed the clearing with his ax still in hand. His gaze moved from me, to Nimiwa, then back to me.

He spoke sharply.

“He asks what happened,” Nimiwa said.

“I understood the tone.”

She answered him in Elvish. Keme looked toward the spring, then motioned at Tawa behind her.

The small god hopped down from the sack and landed next to her. His flame leaned toward the water.

She repeated something in Elvish, adding a gesture with both hands but Keme just stared at her. Nimiwa’s voice continued to get louder until Elder Aponi eventually approached.

“Move the wounded away,” Nimiwa said.

Other elves approached and they continued the conversation in Elvish with the same result.

“What are they saying?” I finally asked.

“They say Hanwi answers. They cannot move wounded now.”

“They assume the answer is coming from the spring?”

Keme stepped between her and the Moon Guardians near the water. He spoke more quietly this time. Nimiwa’s expression tightened.

“He says church is not near. Healing returned so we stay.”

Keme pointed toward the wounded, then at me. His next words were harsher.

“He says I made tribe trust Redborn. Healing came back weak. He says I found Redborn with bad soul.”

Her eyes narrowed and the softness disappeared from her voice. She planted her staff in the mud and stood facing the tribe. Her blue eye flickered.

The first words cut through the arguing. By the time she raised her staff, the Moon Guardians had fallen silent. Even Keme lowered his ax. I understood none of the words, but I understood what had changed. This was not Nimiwa trying to persuade warriors who knew her as the youngest oracle. This was an oracle asserting the two centuries of knowledge she had dedicated herself to.

When she finished, several Moon Guardians began arguing.

“What did you tell them?”

“Hanwi is not beneath water. Keeper carries vessel.”

Aponi and the feathered elder from before answered immediately. They pointed at the blue light gathering around the nearest Moon Guardian’s staff, then toward the wounded elf beneath his hand.

Nimiwa translated without me asking. “If Keeper carries vessel, Hanwi is here. Healing proves.”

It was an inconveniently reasonable argument.

Aponi looked toward Tawa who stood near the water with his flames angled toward the center of the spring.

“What does she think?” I asked.

Aponi spoke again.

“She asks if Hanwi guides Keeper here.”

“Does she?”

Nimiwa looked at the water. “I do not know.”

The tribe had expected an oracle to provide certainty. Instead, she returned half blind with a Redborn who had restored only a fraction of their healing and news that their sacred guardian had become a monster.

Aponi spoke again.

“She says we wait,” Nimiwa translated. “If Keeper comes, Hanwi may answer through it.”

Keme nodded. Several Moon Guardians returned to their chanting.

“They should listen to you.”

“They listen. They disagree.”

I looked toward the spring. Reeds surrounded the water in dense clusters. Most stood straight but along the eastern bank some had been flattened. The tribe may have done it to lay down the wounded. Something big may have done it before they arrived.

I took a step closer but Keme blocked my path.

“I am not going to move the wounded,” I said as I pointed toward the crushed reeds.

He did not understand the words and kept his ax at chest level. Nimiwa translated.

Keme glanced at the bank, then stepped aside slowly, keeping his gaze on me. I slipped past and studied the mud. All of the reeds had bent in the same direction, towards the water. The slime coating them removed any remaining doubt.

“How long has the tribe been here?” I asked.

Nimiwa asked Aponi.

“Not long. Less than one hand of night.”

“And the healing?”

“Started after reached water.”

I turned toward Keme.

“The Keeper is already here.”

Nimiwa translated as I pointed toward the slime covered reeds. Keme’s expression changed before she finished. There was a faint blue light at the bottom. It was slight enough that the reflected moonlight masked it unless you really looked.

Keme shouted and warriors moved between the spring and the wounded. Those carrying stretchers began pulling them back from the water, but the Moon Guardians refused to stop chanting.

Nimiwa looked terrified. The blue light beneath the water shifted and slowly moved toward the bank.

As it got closer I closed my hand around the mark in my palm. Orange flame emerged as the flamberge appeared.

The blue light inside Nimiwa’s eye brightened. She stepped toward the bank.

I grabbed her wrist. “Don’t.”

“It carries Hanwi.”

“It is also big enough to swallow you whole.”

Nimiwa pulled once to get away but did not break my grip.

“Keeper may need oracle.”

“Then you can ask from a distance.”

She looked at me as though I had missed something obvious. “Frog cannot speak Elvish. Or human.”

“Keme doesn't speak human either. We still became great pals.”

A dark shape could be seen moving beneath the water. Keme raised his ax and Sun Braves gathered orange light in their hands. Nimiwa gave a command and some of the Sun Braves lowered their arms.

Keme did not. “He says if Keeper attacks, he kills it.”

The water burst before I could ask how. A massive shape rose from beneath the surface. At first it resembled a smooth boulder, then an eyelid opened.

The eye beneath it was larger than Nimiwa’s head.

Broken shafts protruded from its back and shoulder. Blood still leaked around most of them. The Keeper's body remained mostly submerged, but the movement beneath the water suggested it was large enough to fill the entire spring.

Blue light pulsed through the skin at its chest, most likely Hanwi’s vessel.

The Keeper’s eye moved across the warriors surrounding it.

The Sun Braves raised their spears.

Keme lifted his ax.

“Wait,” I said.

The Keeper had fixed its enormous eye upon Nimiwa. I thought maybe it had recognized her. A stupid hope from a man who should have learned that fortune did not follow him.

The Keeper raised the rest of its head from the water. Its second eye opened. Purple light filled both and brightened.

The sword was moving before I realized what I was doing.