Yelora

“I feel something!” The Summoner shouted so loudly that it sent a pandemonium of parrots aloft.

Yelora’s knees went weak. So many words were fighting to come out at once, it seemed like none would make it. It was happening! The Summoner was bringing forth an Elf child, but too slowly. His face writhed with panic and disgust, and his hands were still submerged. It shouldn’t take this long. The baby would drown.

“Pull her up!” Yelora managed to gasp. She dove for the basin, but there was no need. Eyes squeezed shut, Kashur raised what he’d caught from the depths. The fat pale thing flapped and flopped, swelling in size from the power of his bare hands, but it didn’t look like an Elf child. Oh, Sprites, was it another monster?

No. It was a catfish.

“Uggh! Drop it!” Yelora cried. The Summoner’s eyes popped open, and he hurled the massive thing, now the size of a child’s wagon, into the river where it landed with an outrageous splash.

Yelora felt her entire body deflate. She had been so certain! This was the answer—the Summoner’s power. Why else had the sprite led him here, to this most intimate of moments, of places, if not to help her?

But he had failed.

No, she had failed. He was just the latest proof of it.

Yelora felt the rage welling up in her. She wanted to scream and shout and offend the sprites and everyone else with her vicious, uncouth words, but she did not want the Summoner to see her lose control. So instead of screaming the words, she signed them to the deaf and blind jungle. This is not fair! I’ve done everything that’s been asked of me! I’m leading with strength! I’ve secured the new magic. Now what? How am I supposed to save our people when all I’m given are vague prophecies, mis-speaks, and a good-for-nothing Wizard! Curse you! Curse everything!

“Yelora?”

A flash of guilt ripped through her. She snuck a look over her shoulder, but he wasn’t looking at her at all. He was peering into the basin.

The storm inside her cooled. “What has your attention, Summoner?”

“I think you should come see for yourself.”

She splashed beside him and peered into the pool. A moving picture played out on the surface of the water—one of a sharp-faced Imperial girl and a Dwarf cooking over a campfire in a pine forest.

He was scrying! Here of all places! She sloshed the water angrily. “You dare use filthy Wizard tricks in the Elves’ sacred waters?”

“Stop that!” He seized her wrist in a gloved hand. “I didn’t try to scry. The water just... showed me this.” His baffled brown eyes studied the scene.

The picture had changed. Now it was no longer a girl and Dwarf sitting by a fire, but Ronith squatting in a clearing, talking to the creature, a mangrove treeline like in the lowlands beyond the Wizards’ Lair at her back.

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Yelora twisted her wrist free.“Is this happening now?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Yelora wasn’t sure how she felt about seeing Ronith. The Dark Elf should have followed the tracks she and Sochee had left and joined them at the crash site. Instead, here she was, still clinging to that infernal creature. “Why would Creation Falls show us this?”

“I don’t know.”

The picture swirled away, and Yelora lifted her gaze to the Summoner’s dark eyes, shiny as river stones. “The Dwarf and the girl,” she said. “Do you know them?”

He shifted oddly. “They were at the Council meeting.”

There was more to it, she could tell. “And?”

He shrugged. “And nothing. She just reminds me of someone.”

“Who?”

“My sister, Nyla. I think maybe she’s her daughter.”

“You wouldn’t know your own niece?”

“I haven’t seen my sister in over a decade. I don’t know if she has children or not.”

She harrumphed. Perhaps the Falls were giving them each a personal message. The first message was for the Summoner; the second one had been hers.

What had the Falls wanted her to see? That Ronith was hiding out in Wizard lands with the creature rather than coming home where she belonged? The Dark Elf had had an unhealthy attachment to that thing from the beginning.

The crystals were supposed to remedy this, but she and Kashur had failed at the Falls. There would be no newly born Elf to fulfill the prophecy.

The thought made Yelora’s stomach roll. There was something wrong about it. The Oracle had spoken of a newly born Elf, hadn’t it? She replayed her conversation with the Oracle in her mind and a winter’s chill overtook her.

The Oracle had spoken not of a newly born Elf, but the newest-born Elf. The one who would save their people.

Oh no.

The creature was the newest-born Elf. That horrible little monster was to be the savior of the Elves.

Yelora pushed away from the basin. “We’re leaving.” Sloshing toward shore, she noticed that the water at her feet was cloudy, not clear. A sickening, fishy smell wafted from it. Creation Falls had never smelled fishy before. “Come on, Summoner!” As she turned to hurry him, she noticed two more fish dead in the shallows. Had his evil magic done that?

No, he had shown her a dead fish even before she’d coerced him into reaching into Creation Falls. It wasn’t the Summoner’s magic that had done this; it was the crystals’.

Sprites, she had poisoned Creation Falls with her desperation and folly! She picked up her pace, panic snapping at her heels. She had to find the creature, find Ronith. She had to make this right.

“Open the portal,” she ordered once they’d reached dry land. “Take us to the river near the Wizards’ Lair.”

He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry it didn’t work.” He’d put his gloves back on. He fumbled in his pocket for the compact. “But I’m glad you’ve finally decided to meet with Mol Morin.”

Yelora dug her fingernails into her palms to hold back the prickle of tears. The suffocating smell of dead fish swelled around her every second, although the Summoner did not seem bothered.

The mistake you have yet to make.

Whatever the mistake was, she’d definitely made it by now. Everything she was doing was only making things worse.

But the Oracle had known all this would happen! The Oracle had spoken it, and said there was hope. The creature was the key. It would save them. She must hold the crash site and capture the creature, find out exactly what it needed to do.

Or what needed to be done to it.