Wonder Woman: Warbringer Read online

  “Maeve!” Diana cried.

  The Oracle’s face shifted. She was a wide-eyed child, then a wizened crone, then Hippolyta with amethysts in her ears. She was a monster with black fangs and eyes like opals, then a glowing beauty, her straight nose and full mouth framed by a golden helm. She stepped forward; the shadows shifted. She was Tek now, but Tek as touched by age, dark skin lined, gray at her temples. Diana wanted nothing more than to turn and run. She stayed where she was.

  “Daughter of Earth,” said the Oracle. “Make your offering.”

  Diana willed herself not to flinch. Daughter of Earth. Born of clay. Had the Oracle meant those words as an insult? It didn’t matter. Diana had come here with a purpose.

  She set down her pack and reached inside for the green enamel box. Her hand hovered over a jade comb Maeve had given her on her last birthday; a carnelian leopard, the little talisman she’d carried for years in her pocket, its back bowed in the spot where she’d rubbed her thumb against it for luck; and a tapestry of the planets as they had appeared at the hour of her birth. It was lumpy and full of mistakes. She and her mother had made it together, and greedy for Hippolyta’s time, Diana had pulled rows of threads out every night, hoping they could just keep working on the project forever. She felt along the box’s lining, fingers closing over the object she sought.

  She looked at the moat. There was no obvious way across, but Diana was not going to ask for instruction. She’d heard enough people speak of the Oracle to know that—if her sacrifice was accepted—she would be permitted three questions and no more.

  She stepped into the water. She could see her foot pass through it, see her skin, paler beneath the surface, but she felt nothing. Maybe the river was mere illusion. She crossed to the stone island. When she set foot on the smooth rock, the hum of voices dimmed as if she had entered the eye of a storm.

  Diana stretched out her hand, willing it to steadiness—she did not want to tremble before the Oracle—and uncurled her fingers, revealing the iron arrowhead. It was long enough to cover most of her palm, honed to a cruel point, its tip and crevices stained in a red so dark it looked black in the torches’ icy light.

  The Oracle’s laugh was as dry as the crackle of the fire. “You bring me a gift you despise?”

  Diana recoiled in shock, hand closing protectively over the arrowhead and drawing it close to her heart. “That’s not true.”

  “I speak only truth. Perhaps you are not ready to hear it.” Diana glanced back at her pack, wondering if she should attempt some other offering. But the Oracle said, “No, Daughter of Earth. I do not want your jewels or childish trinkets. I will take the arrow that killed your mother. Though you despise a thing, you may value it still, and the blood of a queen is no small gift.”

  Reluctantly, Diana extended her hand once more. The Oracle plucked the bloodied arrowhead from her palm. Her face shifted. She was Hippolyta again, but this time her black hair was unpinned and unbraided, curling around her shoulders, and she wore a white tunic embroidered in gold. She was as Diana remembered her the day Hippolyta had found her daughter crying in the stables after Diana had overheard two of the Amazons talking before their daily ride. They said I’m a monster, she’d told her mother. They said I’m made of mud. Hippolyta had dried her tears with the sleeve of her tunic, and that night she’d given Diana the arrowhead.

  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 fro
m 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.”

  “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.”

  “Are you? You are not a hero. You are not battle tested. This quest is far beyond your skills and strength. Do not doom the world for the sake of your pride.”

  “That isn’t fair,” Diana said. “I’m trying to do what’s right.” Even as she said the words, Diana knew they weren’t entirely true. She did want glory. She did want the chance to prove herself, not just with a footrace or a wrestling match, but with a hero’s quest, something no one could deny. She wanted to argue with the Oracle, but what was the point in debating an all-seeing ancient?

  “Go home,” said the Oracle. “Go back to the Epheseum. Comfort your sweet friend. Let her know her suffering will soon be at an end. When the Council comes, I will tell them nothing. No one ever need know what you have done. Your crime will remain a secret, and you need not fear exile. The island will return to what it was, the world will be safe, and you may live in peace with your sisters. But should you take the girl from the island…”

  The hum rose to a howl, a thousand howls, screams rising from the charred earth, the clash of swords, the lamentations of the dying, her sisters’ misery amplified a thousand times. The sound of a future Diana could prevent by simply doing nothing.

  “Go,” commanded the Oracle.

  Diana turned and ran, back into the tunnel, into the dark, unable to escape that terrible howl. She ran without caution, scraped her shoulder against the bramble wall, tripped as the tunnel slanted downward, stumbled to her knees. Then she was back up, running again, that horrible chorus of anguish building to a shriek that vibrated through her bones and hammered at her skull.

  The roots parted before her, and she tumbled out of the temple and into the brackish water of the marsh. She dragged herself upright, breathless, and lurched toward the banks. Through the gloom of the marsh, she fled, trying to put as much distance as she could between herself and the t
emple.

  Only after Diana burst from the darkness of the trees and crested the first set of low hills did she allow herself to stop. She could smell the sweet, green scent of honey myrtle, feel the fresh spatter of rain on her skin. But even here she did not feel safe.

  I am an Amazon.

  In the whispers of the leaves, she heard the Oracle sneering, Are you?

  She could not risk it. She could not risk her sisters’ lives for the sake of a girl she barely knew. She’d been foolish to dive into the sea this morning, but she could make the right choice now.

  The earth rumbled beneath Diana’s feet. Lightning split the sky. She hitched her pack more securely on her shoulders and headed for the cave. Alia was dying. If Diana could not save her, at least she could make sure she did not die alone.

  The giant was back. Alia thought that maybe after the wreck, in her panicked, adrenaline-fueled state, she’d exaggerated the details of her rescuer. But, no, the girl was back in the cave, and she was just as Alia remembered her—six feet tall and gorgeous, built like someone who could sell weird fitness equipment on late-night television. The Ab Blaster. The Biceps Monger.

  Maybe I’m delirious. She knew she had a fever and chills, but she couldn’t make sense of her symptoms. The headache and the nausea could be the result of a concussion. No doubt she’d been banged around pretty badly when the Thetis went down. But she didn’t want to think about that—the shock of the explosion, Ray screaming, the gray weight of the water as it dragged her down. Every time her mind brushed up against it, her thoughts stuttered to a stop. Better to focus on the cave, the blanket tucked around her, the terrible pounding in her head. If it was just a bad concussion, then her job was to stay awake until help came—and she’d done it. Here was help. In the form of a girl who looked like a supermodel who moonlighted as a cage fighter. Or vice versa. But where was the rescue team? The helicopter? The EMTs to flash a light in Alia’s eyes and tell her everything was going to be all right?