the oracle and the warlord
Karina Sumner-Smith
The Warlord arrives at dawn. She is greeted with every courtesy: with a true-wood chair on which to rest, with pale yellow tea steeped from wildflowers, with clean water to wash her hands and feet. Normal water, she is assured.
“I will stand,” the Warlord says, staring up at the temple’s closed doors as she shakes out her dripping hands. Those hands are scarred and callused, chapped from the dry mountain air; yet her touch is gentle, her nod gracious, as she takes the clay cup of tea.
“As you wish,” Andra says in a tone that implies she will be standing a long time, Warlord or not.
For five long days, Andra and the Oracle’s other attendants watched the Warlord’s party make its way up the steep trail. The smoke-belching cars had been aband
