Dreams of the Oracle

Chapter 7

Jack Linch awoke in the carriage he had been riding in since his escape. His head felt thick and slow. He opened his eyes lethargically to see the woman, his haughty, malignant savior, sitting across from him as usual. She was dressed in her customary black and she had something in her pale hand that she seemed to be admiring. He tried to raise his head for a closer look only to have a pounding headache stab into his forehead. He laid his head back against the wall and groaned.

"You ought to be more careful Master Linch. I drugged your rations the night before last and you've been out like a dead man ever since," murmured the woman.

Even in the state he was in Jack's temper was formidable. Red hot rage coursed through him like a living thing. He would make her suffer for this. Slowly he raised himself up, ignoring the pain and nausea. The woman who he knew only as Milady watched him coolly.

"Impressive," she said, then she held up what was in her hand. Jack felt a wave of despair pass over him. She had taken his ruby.

At that point his resolve eroded and his headache became too much. He collapsed back into his seat and closed his eyes. He began slowly rubbing his temples. He would kill her...another time, he thought petulantly.

"Now, Master Linch," she said with such smugness that it set his teeth on edge. "It is time for us to discuss the terms of your liberation."

Jack said nothing as he waited for the pain in his head to subside.

"My Lord has freed you and healed you," she continued. "Now he asks you to perform a small task and this stone, " she held it up, "will be yours and you will have regained all your powers."

"What task?" Jack managed to ask between his teeth.

"The woman that healed you. She was an informant. She gave us information regarding someone we have been searching for, for a very long time. I believe you know of him, his name is Abdiel."

Rage flared and twisted in Jack's chest at the name of his hated enemy, "what do you want with him?" he asked.

"We want you to lead a small team to kill him and bring something that he has back to us."

Jack smiled, " I'll kill him myself. I need no team." He hadn't listened to the other half of his task. He was being offered something he would never refuse so the rest didn't matter.

"You will take a team, they will be under your direction and I am sure you will find them most useful."

Nothing else mattered. "I'll do it, Milady," said Jack

She nodded and reached within her dark robe producing a small knife. It had a dark iron blade with strange markings.

"This is called a swearing knife," she said softly.

The man with the strange green eyes that sat next to Jack suddenly grabbed his arm and held it out to the woman in a vice-like grip.

"Swear to me that you will find and kill Abdiel. Swear to me that you will never betray me. Swear to me that you will fulfill this oath even at the cost of your own life," as she spoke the blade of the knife began to glow as though heated by an invisible flame. As it turned from red to orange to white she looked at him intensely. "Swear it!" she hissed.

Jack Linch looked from his forcibly out stretched arm to the knife. Its glowing light mesmerized him but also made him afraid. Reaching within he drowned his fear with his boiling hate and spoke with conviction, "I so swear!"

No sooner had he spoken than she plunged the knife into his arm. White lighting surged through him, throwing his whole body into convulsions. Burning pain filled his body and he screamed. She kept the knife in him watching his pain and convulsions with interest. Finally, she yanked it out.