Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(15)
“But it was Helen’s beauty that caused the war.”
The Oracle cut a dismissive hand through the air and the torches flickered. “Who tells those stories? Tales of vengeful goddesses who wager in human lives for vanity’s sake? Of course men believe a woman’s power must lie in the fineness of her features, the shapeliness of her limbs. You know better, Daughter of Earth. Helen’s blood carried in it war, and in her seventeenth year, those powers reached their peak. So it was with every Warbringer. So it will be with Alia. You have seen it in the waters.”
“A line of Warbringers.” Diana turned the words over. Was it possible? How could a mortal—even a mortal whose ancestry could be traced to Nemesis, goddess of retribution—cause so much misery?
The Oracle was watching her closely. “Heed me, Daughter of Earth. When a Warbringer is born, destruction is inevitable. One has been the catalyst for every great conflict in the World of Man. With the coming of the new moon, Alia’s powers will reach their apex, and war will come.” She paused. “Unless she dies before then.”
“The explosion wasn’t an accident,” Diana said as understanding came. “Someone wanted Alia dead.”
“Many someones will do all they can to make sure that the world does not enter an age of bloodshed. But you need do nothing. Simply wait, and the girl will die, as she was meant to in the shipwreck. It is the best way.”
Diana’s eyes narrowed. She’d read the stories. She knew how oracles spoke. “The best way,” she considered. The Oracle’s mouth turned down at the corners as if she truly could read Diana’s thoughts. For the first time, Diana asked herself why the Oracle had chosen to appear with Tek’s face. To frighten her? To intimidate her? “The best way, but not the only way.”
The Oracle’s eyes flashed silver fire, as if they blazed with the same light as the torches on the walls. “Ask your final question and be gone from this place.” Diana opened her mouth, but the Oracle raised a graceful hand. “Think carefully. I am not always so obliging in the gifts I accept. You worry over the fate of one girl when the future of the world hangs in the balance. Worry instead for your own future. Wouldn’t you like to know if Tekmessa is right about you? If you will bring glory or despair to the Amazons? Eventually, your mother will grow weary of rule. Wouldn’t you like to know if you will ever truly be a queen or if you are doomed to spend your life in half shadow? I can show you all of it, Daughter of Earth.”
Diana hesitated. She thought of Tek’s words, of her mother’s denials. The Oracle might tell her she was an abomination, secretly reviled by the gods, destined to bring only misery to her people. But what if the Oracle told her she carried the gods’ blessing, that she could be a boon to her sisters instead of a curse? It would absolve her mother, cease the endless speculation about Diana. Tek would never be able to say a word against either of them again.
But would it make Diana any more of an Amazon? I could ask how to obtain their approval. I could ask how to win glory in battle. She thought of Alia’s hand gripping the hull, Alia’s pulse beating beneath her questing fingers. A girl restored to life by Diana’s own breath.
Save my people and Alia dies. Save Alia and I’ll watch my sisters slaughtered. Really, it made the question simple.
“How do I save everyone?”
Fury suffused the Oracle’s features. Her image flickered—a serpent, Tek, a skull, a black-gummed wolf. Her eyes were gemstones, snakes writhed upon her head and poured from her mouth. “Stubborn as all girls are stubborn,” she snarled. “Reckless as all girls are reckless.”
The words were out before Diana thought better of them. “And were you never a reckless, stubborn girl?” A pointless question, but it didn’t matter now. Diana had asked the important question first, and the Oracle’s anger made her believe it had been the right one.
The anguished hum rose around them, an aching lament layered with wild sorrow, and in it Diana heard the echoes of her sisters’ cries on that terrible battlefield.
When the Oracle spoke, she was no longer Tek, but wore a different face, one that seemed hewn from light itself: “The Warbringer must reach the spring at Therapne before the sun sets on the first day of Hekatombaion. Where Helen rests, the Warbringer may be purified, purged of the taint of death that has stained her line from its beginning. There may her power be leashed and never passed to another.”
Therapne. Greece. It would mean leaving the island. Impossible. And yet…
“The line of Warbringers would be broken?”
The Oracle said nothing, but she made no denials. If Alia died on Themyscira, a new Warbringer would be born—maybe in a month, maybe in a hundred years, but it would happen. If they could reach the spring in time, if Diana brought Alia there under her protection, that would all change.
“I see you, Daughter of Earth. I see your dreams of glory. But what you do not see is the danger. Factions in the World of Man hunt the Warbringer. Some seek to end her life that they may ensure peace; some seek to protect her life that they may bring about an age of conflict. In less than two weeks, Hekatombaion begins. You cannot hope to reach the spring in time. You are one girl.”
Diana clenched her fists, thinking of the bloodied arrowhead the Oracle had accepted as sacrifice. Her mother’s blood. The same blood that flowed in Diana’s veins. “I am an Amazon.”