Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(14)

Now the Oracle spoke with Hippolyta’s voice, the same words she’d said sitting in the lamplight beside Diana’s bed. “There is no joy in having been born mortal. You need never know the sorrow of what it is to be human. Among all of us, only you will never know the pain of death.”

The words had meant little to Diana at the time, but she’d never forgotten them, and she’d never been able to explain why she treasured the arrowhead so much. Her mother had intended it as a warning, as a reminder to value the life she’d been given. But to Diana, it had been the thing that tied her to a larger world, even if it was through something as gruesome as her mother’s blood.

The Oracle wore the face of an aged Tek once more. She tossed the arrowhead into the brazier, and a shower of orange-hued sparks shot upward.

“You bring me gifts of death today,” said the Oracle. “Just as you have brought death to our shores.”

Diana’s head snapped up. “You know about Alia?”

“Is that your first question?”

“No!” Diana said hurriedly. She was going to have to be smarter.

“The land shakes. The stalk that never wilts grows weary.”

“All because of me,” Diana said miserably. “All because of Alia.”

“And those that came before her. Speak your questions, Daughter of Earth.”

Some tiny part of Diana had hoped she might be mistaken, that Alia’s rescue and the disasters on Themyscira had been mere coincidence. Now she could not hide from the truth of what she’d done and the trouble it had wrought. If she was going to make things right, she would have to word her questions carefully.

“How do I save Themyscira?”

“Do nothing.” The Oracle waved her hand, and the smoke above the brazier arced over the moat. Through it, Diana saw a figure looking back at her from the water. It was Alia. Diana realized she was seeing into the cave on the cliff side. Alia huddled beneath the blanket, shaking, eyes closed, forehead sheened with sweat.

“But she wasn’t injured—” Diana protested.

“The island is poisoning her just as she is poisoning the island. But Themyscira is older and stronger. The girl will die, and with her will pass the taint of the mortal world. Most of your sisters will survive and return to health. The city can be rebuilt. The island can be purified once more.”

Most would survive? Will Maeve live? The words burned on Diana’s tongue, begging to be spoken. “I don’t understand,” she said, careful not to ask a question. “I’m not sick, and Alia was fine when I left her.”

“You are of the island, born uncorrupted, athanatos, deathless. You will not sicken as your sisters do, and your proximity may prolong the girl’s life, may even soothe her, but it cannot heal her. She will die, and the island will live. All will be as it should.”

“No,” Diana said, surprised at the anger in her voice. “How do I save Alia’s life?” Her second question, gone.

“You must not.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“Then call her by the name given to her ancestors, haptandra, the hand of war. Look into the smoke and know the truth of what she is.”

Again the smoke billowed up from the brazier and spread over the water, but this time when Diana looked, it felt as if she’d been engulfed in flame. She stood at the center of a battleground, surrounded by fallen soldiers, their bodies strewn over a ruined landscape, limbs like driftwood on a black-ash shore. She flinched as a massive armored vehicle roared by, a war machine of the type she’d seen in books, crushing bodies beneath its treads. She could hear a rattling sound in the distance, explosions that came in rapid bursts.

As her eyes focused on the horror around her, a helpless moan escaped her lips. There, only a few feet away, lay Maeve, her heart pierced by a sword, pinned to the ground like a pale insect. The bodies that surrounded Diana were Amazons. Her eye caught on a splash of dark hair: her mother, battle armor smashed and broken, her body discarded like so much refuse.

She heard a war cry and turned, reaching for a weapon she did not have. She saw Tek, her body glazed in sweat, her eyes battle-bright, facing down some kind of monster, the kind from stories, half-man, half-jackal. The jackal’s jaws closed over Tek’s throat, shook her like a doll, tossed her aside. Tek fell, blood gushing from her torn jugular. Her eyes focused on Diana, blazing with accusation.

“Daughter of Earth.”

Diana gasped, struggling for breath. The image cleared, and she was looking at her own face in the water, her cheeks wet with tears.

“You’re getting salt in my scrying pool,” said the Oracle.

Diana wiped the tears from her face. “That can’t be. I saw monsters. I saw my sisters—”

“Alia is no ordinary girl. She is polluted by death.”

“As all mortals are,” Diana argued. What was different about Alia? The island had rejected her as it would any human presence. If Diana could just get her away from Themyscira, everything would return to normal.

“It is not her death she carries but the death of the world. Do you think chance brought her boat so close to our shores? Alia is a Warbringer, born of the same line as Helen, who was herself sired by Nemesis.”

“Helen? Not Helen of—”

“Ten years the Trojan War raged. No god was spared. No hero. No Amazon. So it will be if Alia is allowed to live. She is haptandra. Where she goes, there will be strife. With each breath, she draws us closer to Armageddon.”