The Warslayer(92)
Glory ran after it, arriving panting and out of breath to find Belegir consulting with Tavara. The little healer had grown quite proprietary toward her charge just in the time Glory had been here. She wondered if Mages married—or whatever Allimir did to produce little Allimir. They were going to have to do something to fill up all those deserted cities.
"You got a bird," Glory said, when she could speak.
"Mage Helevrin sent word," Tavara said importantly. "She will come with a party to the Oracle tomorrow—for counsel. Just like— Just like Before!"
Belegir looked past Tavara's shoulder at Glory, regarding her with as much sternness as his round pink face was capable of. They both knew that she'd put off what she needed to do for long enough. There was no more time.
* * *
After dinner, Glory trudged up the steps to the temple, lantern in one hand, Gordon in the other. She carried the lantern carefully, because it was already lit. She was going alone, and she wouldn't have Belegir to light it for her once she got to the Wellspring.
But this time she was damned if she was sleeping on bare rock, and too bad if it took away from the purity of the whole experience. She wheeled one of the lustral carts out of its chamber, hooked the lantern on the side and propped Gordon jauntily up among the red velvet ropes, then went back to the sleeping alcoves beside the Presence Chamber and grabbed a mattress and several blankets and loaded them on the cart. The cart wheeled easily down the hallway to the Oracle—it was designed to, after all.
She felt a twinge of unease as she neared the armory, but the door was shut tight, just as she'd left it the last time. She thought about opening it to see if she could get her own sword back, and decided against it. If she got it back, something'd probably show up that she had to use it on, and she'd rather stick with her perfect record of victories. War, someone had once said, was hours of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror. Well, she'd had enough terror. She was ready for several hundred hours of boredom.
She turned away from the armory and faced the Oracle
I don't want to go in there again, she thought, looking at the barred door. What if it shuts and won't let me out?
Then Belegir will come looking for you, she told herself pragmatically. Belegir knew she was down here. Cambros and Tavara knew she'd come down here to do some sort of mysterious hero thing. And even if something weird and peculiar happened to all three of them, Helevrin was coming tomorrow with a whole gaggle of people who'd need water fetched from here, and she'd get the door open. There was no possible way for Glory to be trapped here.
But her reluctance to go inside was strong.
God's teeth, gel, y'wanna live forever? Ross always used to ask her that—at least the last part—as if the obvious answer should be "no." And when the stakes were high enough, when people were counting on her, that was the answer, the right answer, the answer she gave.
But somehow, right here, that didn't seem to be the answer she felt like giving.
Growling under her breath, Glory strode over, jerked the bar out of its brackets, and swung the door open. It swept back fluidly, offering no resistance at all, and banged against the wall, the sharp reverberation of its impact against the stone making Glory jump nervously.
A regular bundle of maiden twitches, that's our Glor.
She wheeled the cart up against the door, hoping she could trick herself into believing she was going to leave it there all night to brace the door open, knowing deep down inside that she wouldn't. Sighing at her own perversity, she unhooked the lantern and went inside to place it into its niche. It was the one Belegir had used: slide the outer sleeve up, and everything was dark. Leave it down, and you saw the flame. She thought she might leave it down. The Oracle wouldn't mind her having a night-light, would it?
She was pleased to feel only the very faintest twinges of foreboding as she dragged the mattress down off the cart and laid it beside the Wellspring, making a second trip to arrange the blankets on her bed. It would be too short for her, but for one night, it wouldn't matter if her legs hung off the end. At least she'd had a proper dinner before she'd come, this time. Dinners and breakfasts, baths and clean clothes—she was turning into a regular hobbit.
And here was her hole in the ground.
At last, reluctantly, she realized she couldn't stall any longer. She pushed the cart back from the door, climbed the steps for the last time and leaned out to pull the door shut.
It was dark. Every time, the quality of the darkness took her completely by surprise.
She fought down the moment of automatic panic, and, just as it had done before, it subsided, leaving behind the sense of peace and comfort. Nothing bad could happen to her here in the dark. This place was her friend. She was in the presence of Erchane the Mother—who, like all good mothers, let her children go free to make their own mistakes, no matter how disastrous those mistakes might be.