The Oracle’s Sprite

Excerpt

The Oracle’s Sprite
Mell Eight © 2022
All Rights Reserved

Prologue

Keir smelled blood in the air. He knew that scent intimately from growing up with the Captain of the Guard as his father. He had stood at the man’s knee while his father directed the army against the marauding thieves plaguing the people of northern Altnoia. Keir had learned to wield a sword and fire a pistol in training grounds soaked with the blood and sweat of the trainees before him.

It was a scent he was all too familiar with, but he had never before smelled it inside his mother’s home. She insisted that blood belonged on the battlefield and training grounds, not on her fancy rugs. Neither Father nor Keir had ever dared allow even a speck of blood into the house for fear of her wrath.

Keir rolled out of bed and grabbed his muzzleloader out of the nearby cabinet. A fast peek into the hallway showed nothing out of the ordinary. He quickly pulled on sturdy breeches and a shirt, over which he clumsily laced a vest of leather armor. If the scent of blood was only his imagination acting up, Keir didn’t want to scandalize anyone by walking through the halls naked. He tied his sword to his belt, hiking it high because Father had ordered he train with the sword into which he would grow as an adult rather than a child-sized one, and made sure his gun was loaded.

When he opened the door this time, the smell in the hallway was even worse than in his bedroom, which he hadn’t noticed when he’d first glanced out. Keir carefully peeked around the doorway into the hall. A stranger stood in front of his parents’ room at the far end; he hadn’t been there moments before, and Keir didn’t recognize him as one of his father’s men.

“Make sure they’re dead, then hurry,” the man snarled.

Keir lifted his pistol, aimed, and fired. The man fell to the ground in a spray of blood, a hole in his forehead. Blood and death weren’t something Keir shied away from after everything his father had taught him; this didn’t faze him now. Keir ducked back into his room to reload, then poked his head back into the hall. Two men had run out of his parents’ room at the noise and stood there exclaiming over their leader’s death. They hadn’t seen Keir yet, and he killed one of them with another headshot.

It gave away his position, but one-on-one odds were better than trying to take on both of them at once anyway. With no time to reload, he tucked his gun back into its holster and drew his sword. He rushed the lone man and slashed at him. The man clumsily blocked with his own sword; he hadn’t had the training Keir had. After a few more thrusts, Keir impaled the stranger, and he fell to the floor, dead.

Keir hurried to his parents’ room and stopped short in the doorway. He gagged, trying not to vomit even as tears blurred his vision. They were both dead, their necks thoroughly cut in their sleep. Blood stained the bedclothes around their bodies, their eyes closed peacefully, as if they hadn’t even known their death was approaching so swiftly. Keir spun around and forced himself to walk away. He couldn’t do anything for them, but his baby sister might still be alive.

Her room was down the hall in the nursery. Her nurse had no doubt snuck into the kitchen for a bit of fun with the butler once Claire was asleep. Claire still slept in her crib, unknowing of all that had just happened. Keir carefully gathered her into his nondominant arm, just in case he needed to fight again, and hurried from the nursery. He went upward, traveling the many steps to the bell tower. In ringing the bell, he signaled warning and death to everyone within hearing distance. His father’s loyal troops would come, and they would find out who had murdered the Captain of the Guard of Altnoia.

Should the child test anywhere but the Air Caste, his spirit would be crushed. The Oracle knew that without a doubt. The child looked the part prior to his testing. Thin and willowy, it seemed as if his body had been carved slender by the constant gusting of air. His hair was long and pale blond, barely a shade too colorful for someone in the Air Caste. His eyes were the gray of a wind-tossed sky before a storm. A flighty child, he liked to skip while everyone else walked and to hum to himself. He was echoing the flow of air inside the Monastery and giving voice to the sounds the wind carried to him. It made him seem odd to many of his peers, yet those who knew the wind understood the strange child perfectly. The Oracle had him test first, as she did with all children destined for greatness.

He was expected to test highly, given his strong ties with the Air Caste as a child, and he did. The previous Dragon of Air had passed away forty-five years ago; the fact that no new Dragon had arrived to replace her for so very long set an unhappy record. It wasn’t a surprise that when he emerged from the testing chamber, his hair had paled to pure white, and the Dragon of Air was tattooed on his back.

The dragon was formless. His back might have still looked blank if it weren’t for the slightest blurring of the skin as if an invisible wind was forever etched there. The Oracle could see a pair of eyes hidden there, as well as a pair of clear wings attached to a massive body. She knew where to look to find the dragon tattoo, as did the watching Masters.

Her Dragon of Air remained in the Monastery only a short year for training. It was an unhappy time for him, she knew. Her Monastery was sick, and that sickness fixated on those with prestige, particularly the Dragons, and in the end made him suffer for testing well with both physical and psychological attacks. The Dragon of Air tried hiding away, and he even tried ineffectually confronting it, only to fail. Eventually, he simply flittered off wherever the Air would take him. He traveled the world on the wings of the wind. The Oracle smiled and let him go, glad to let him finally escape. Confining the Dragon of Air in the Monastery for her to eventually send him out on a quest would be cruel. Besides, her Dragon of Fire would soon come of age, and she needed to focus on his future if she wanted the world to survive for the Dragon of Air to continue his aimless travels.

Four Years Later

The Oracle settled into a cushion, getting comfortable because she knew it would take a while to delve through the past to find what she so desperately needed. She blew out a breath and closed her eyes, letting the power of prophesy take her away…

By the time Keir was eighteen, his father’s men had named him their leader. He had proven his mettle over the past four years, leading campaign after campaign until the position had become undeniably his. He might have taken the position as early as two years ago had he been older, but despite everything he had learned at his father’s side and on the field of battle, his youth made other soldiers uncomfortable. He had decided to wait for his majority instead.

No one could match his motivation and drive to defeat the forces of the usurper king, crazy King Ferim, and bring back Prince Edan to the throne. His father had been cruelly killed in order to bring the armies under the sole purview of King Ferim, but he had underestimated the soldiers’ loyalty to their captain. Keir had earned that loyalty himself, and nothing would stop him.

“Sir, I fear we’ve been outflanked,” Matherson said softly, staring around them in the dark forest. A retreat built by King Ferim before his bloody ascension to the throne was hidden in the middle of the woods. Keir worried that if he attacked the capital, King Ferim could flee to that retreat and try to regroup. They had been working to destroy all of his potential strongholds before they took out the man himself.

“They don’t know we’re coming, so how can they outflank us?” Keir replied, his voice just as soft. He and fifty soldiers, some of his strongest men and women, crept through the forest. According to his scouts, they would soon come upon a ridge that would give them a good vantage point. A ridge like that would be exactly where Keir would hide some of his deadliest traps and fastest lookouts, but his scouts had affirmed that the area was clear.

“There he is!” someone shouted from just ahead. A gun went off with a bang, and then Keir heard swearing. “Catch that damned thief!”

Keir held his hand out in the ready signal. Thief or guards, they would all fall into his trap tonight. He refused to be outflanked due to a coincidence occurring in these woods. His soldiers spread out, hands at the ready on their guns and swords.

The trees rustled just ahead—someone was coming—and Keir tensed. His finger was steady on the trigger of his gun and his sightline unimpeded, but no one emerged. One of his men glanced around uneasily for a few seconds until the crack of leaves and sticks underfoot just ahead refocused him.

Six enemy guardsmen walked out of the trees, grumbling unhappily to each other about being sent out after the thief. Twelve of Keir’s men encircled the group before they had the chance to aim the weapons they were so carelessly swinging about. It was the work of moments to divest them of their weapons. Keir also took their uniforms and had six of his own men change clothes.

“They’ll open the gates for us,” Keir explained with a wide grin. They hatched a new plan quickly. The masquerading soldiers would wait an hour to give credence to the idea that they had been searching the woods for the thief before heading directly to the retreat where the gates would open to let them in.

After the plan was implemented, they had to wait for the signal that their men were inside. To pass the time, Keir walked a perimeter around the makeshift camp. He had sentries posted and had other men patrolling, but he liked to keep abreast of everything as much as he could. He must have walked past one particular bush at least five times, as had many other soldiers, without seeing anything suspicious. There was no reason anyone should have missed the body tucked underneath the branches, yet they all somehow had.

Keir was sure the body hadn’t been there the last time he’d walked by, but there was no mistaking its presence after it was discovered. Keir rushed to the boy’s side, only then realizing that the person under the bush was probably a few years older than Keir. He had pale-colored hair and skin and was very thin. Unconscious, he bled sluggishly from a gunshot wound in his thigh.

“Bring me a med kit!” Keir called back to camp immediately. He guessed he had found the thief; anyone with the guts to infiltrate King Ferim’s property to steal was a friend of Keir’s.

Two men rushed to Keir’s side. They had the bag of medical supplies with them, and Keir grabbed some gauze to press against the wound. The thief’s eyes fluttered open, beautiful gray against his pale skin, causing Keir to catch his breath in wonder. Those eyes looked around wildly, quickly taking in the three men hovering over him and the forest around them.

“It’s all right,” Keir insisted. “We’re going to help you.”

Tears of pain filled the man’s eyes, and he whimpered softly when Keir increased his pressure on the wound to try to stop the bleeding.

“It’s…” the thief began, but he had to pause to catch his breath. “It’s too late for me right now.”

“You’ll be fine,” Keir insisted. “Just hold on a little longer.”

The thief smiled brightly through his tears. “You’re too kind to me,” he murmured. “Thank you.”

His eyes slid closed slowly, as if he didn’t want to look away from Keir until forced to do so. The man’s neck slipped sideways as the muscles holding it up went slack. His life faded away in front of Keir’s eyes. Except, the body itself faded too. He saw bush and earth through the thief’s body, and then suddenly the compress he was holding against the thief’s leg dropped to the ground.

There was blood and broken branches to indicate that Keir hadn’t been seeing things; yet the thief was gone.

A gentle breeze ruffled through the clearing, rustling the leaves and Keir’s hair, and he shared an incredulous look of shock with the two soldiers beside him.

Two Years Later

The Oracle opened her eyes and smiled—the vision she had called up from the past fading away. “Found you,” she whispered triumphantly. She rose to her feet and left the meditation chamber. Her outer room was empty—no supplicants waited for her advice today—but outside, four of her Masters stood guard. She pulled open the doors and stepped out.

Elder Flame had taken on many more shifts as her guard since the Dragon of Fire had left the Monastery. He didn’t feel as if he could take on another pupil, so he lent his strengths elsewhere. Luckily for her, he was one of the guards on duty at the moment.

“Elder Flame,” she said. “Next time you write to your Dragon in Altnoia, please ask if his king might send Captain Keir Duard to see me at their earliest convenience.”

“Of course, Oracle,” Elder Flame replied with a respectful bow.

“Thank you,” she replied before returning to the privacy of her room. Once the door was again closed behind her, safe from any prying eyes, she let out a wide grin. She had finally found him.