The Emperor's Wolves (Wolves of Elantra #1) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,104
desk, the middle drawer where the large sketches are, you can see the sketches she did recently.”
“You’ve seen them?”
Ybelline nodded.
“And she’s okay with me touching them?”
Ybelline nodded again. Severn left his chair and headed toward the desk. He opened the flat, but long, middle drawer. The first sketch on what appeared to be a stack of sketches was of Ybelline. Ybelline was wearing the dress that she’d chosen to leave the Tha’alani quarter in. Even without the coloring, it was clearly the one she was now wearing.
Severn in the sketches was not wearing the clothing that he had chosen—the clothing Elluvian had decided was appropriate for a high-class servant in the High Halls. He was wearing something darker and less fussy. He appeared to be wearing a belt made of a single row of chain links—which was fanciful and ridiculous—and wielding what looked like two oddly shaped swords.
He lifted that sketch, set it aside, and looked at the rest. “Are all of these relevant?”
“She felt they were. There are no sketches in that drawer that she doesn’t feel have a tenuous connection to our visit, or the reasons for our visit.”
“This is Elluvian.”
“Yes. Oddly dressed, but yes. He looks grim,” Ybelline added. “Helmat looks angry.”
Severn lifted a sketch of an older Tha’alani man with a slight beard and a stoop to the shoulders.
“The castelord,” was her quiet reply. “Mine, not yours.”
“And this?”
“Barrani. From his clothing, either a lord or one with the desire to be perceived as lord. Note his servants.”
“This one isn’t so much a sketch—it has color.”
She nodded. “It’s possible the colors are necessary. But she made two stone sculptures as well; they’re on the table.”
“When will it be safe to sit down?”
Ybelline exhaled. “I don’t know.”
“Should we collect things she might need if she’s having a vision?”
Silence. A beat. A longer beat. “...No.”
Severn froze. He had lifted the colored sketch. Beneath it was a picture of a young woman. Not a child, not anymore. Her arms were exposed, and her back, and she wore a revealing green dress that she certainly didn’t own now; he could see familiar marks across the skin of arms and back. She was looking over her shoulder, her eyes wide with desperation, and behind her he could see trees and a stone tower.
His sudden stillness drew Tha’alani attention.
Ybelline recognized her as well—but she would, wouldn’t she? It was his memory of Elianne, and the terrible lengths he had gone to to save her, that were at the heart of the answers the Wolves had sought.
“She’s—” he swallowed.
“She is still alive. I think she is twenty, maybe a bit older—or younger—in this picture.”
“She is looking at Severn,” Random said. They both turned toward her.
“Does she want to kill me?” he couldn’t help asking.
“Yes? No? I don’t know. But she was looking at you, because I was standing beside you in my vision. Things are difficult in that then—you’ll see. That’s not now.”
He set the sketches aside and took his seat. He almost abandoned it, but Ybelline had come to stand beside him, and she placed a gentle hand firmly on his shoulder.
Random was creating. She wasn’t taking the base materials out of which these various figures and sketches and paintings had been worked and using them to chisel or paint or sketch: she was creating the item out of...thin air.
“Is this how it normally works?” he asked.
“No. Normally the Oracles are given the materials they demand or need by those who oversee them.”
“And why isn’t Random given them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is this why she’s almost starved?”
“Dehydrated, but yes.”
“Do they all do this?”
“No, or Random doesn’t believe so. I think she believes they can if they’re desperate enough, or if the vision’s imperative is too strong.”
“Why is she doing it now? There’s no desperate need—”
“It’s—it’s not the need of outsiders, it’s not the need of those who have never been handed the future—that defines desperate or need. If a puppy was going to be hit by a wagon, and it could somehow be prevented, the strength of the oracle itself defines what’s produced.
“The puppy might not be relevant to those who want a glimpse of the future. The Hawks. The Wolves. Think of the lives that might be saved, the murders that might be prevented, yes? Nor is the puppy relevant to the Emperor. But the concerns of rulers do not define the oracles. The concerns of the Oracles don’t, either—although as they get older, and if they survive, they can sometimes direct the visions.