Lionheart extended the hand holding the tiny drop. He felt a wrinkled claw of a hand take his, and he placed the gift into that one’s keeping and withdrew.
“Ah! A pearl!” said the voice. “I feel the smooth whiteness, like sea foam made solid. A gift of the water gods, beyond compare.” Little clucking, smacking noises then, as though the speaker salivated. Had the oracle eaten the pearl? Lionheart shuddered.
“You have come to ask a question of the Mother, have you?”
“I have.”
“You realize that when she answers, your life will forever change?”
“I hope so.”
“Hope? Here?”
A light struck and flared. It nearly blinded Lionheart and he covered his face with his hands. When he looked again, he saw an ancient, wrinkled woman sitting cross-legged before him, smiling a hideous smile. She held a candle cupped in both hands, and the glow from it cast her face in awful shadows.
Her eyes were white. She was blind.
“There is no hope in this place,” she said, her mouth speaking one set of words while Lionheart heard another. “There is no hope, only fulfillment.” Those sightless eyes looked into the space above his head, and her smile grew, revealing bare gums. “Tell me what you want.”
“Tell me what you want.”
The white eyes before him are no longer blind. They are penetrating, staring at him from a smooth ebony face. The glow of the candle is gone. There is no light in this place, though Lionheart sees clearly.
He sees the Lady of Dreams Realized. She is beautiful. She is horrifying.
“Tell me what you want.”
“Who are you?” he gasps.
“You know who I am.”
And Lionheart knows this is true. He recognizes her from a hundred dreams, only he knows that he is not dreaming now.
“Tell me what you want.”
Never in his life, not even when he gazed into the eyes of Death, has he been so frightened. But somehow he finds a voice and says, “I want . . . I want to know how to deliver Southlands from the Dragon.”
She smiles. Her white hair flows about them both like storm clouds, and Lionheart feels as though he is being dragged toward her.
“That is secret knowledge, indeed. The secret of my brother’s doom.”
“You asked me what I want. I have told you.”
“And I will give you your answer, my darling, but only if you tell me something first.”
He has come this far. He knows this is his only chance. “What do you need to know?” he asks.
“Tell me what you want.”
“I just told you!”
“No, my child. That is not your dream, your secret dream most dear to your heart; that is merely your mission. Tell me your dream, Lionheart, for I am the Lady of Dreams Realized and I long to realize your dream for you.
“Do you wish to remain where you are? Free from the duties to which you were born, free to be the man you choose to be? Free to love whom you will, free to go where you please? Do you dream of freedom?
“Or do you wish to return? Do you long to fulfill the desires of your mother, of your father? Do you dream of being the prince you were born to be, of becoming the king? Will you marry as they have chosen for you and take up the burden of your forefathers? Will you be Eldest of Southlands?
“Tell me what you want.”
Lionheart is suspended in blackness, enormous blackness without floor, ceiling, or walls. Perhaps he is falling; he cannot say. The weight of the choice pressures him from all sides while simultaneously tearing him in two. He knows the moment of decision has come. But he hates it. As though he must kill a piece of himself, sacrifice one man that the other might live.
In the end, there is only one choice he can make.
“I will be Eldest of Southlands,” he says.
“So be it.”
Lionheart blinked and saw the glowing candle once more. Then he saw the rest of the room as well. No longer did it seem a vast and unsearchable vacuum. It was nothing but a bare little room with a wooden floor, wooden walls, a straw pallet in one corner, and a basin in which something nasty reeked. A hermit’s hovel would seem lavish in comparison. It was dark, dank, and disgusting, well suited to its occupant.
The Mother’s Mouth gazed at him, the smile fixed on her ugly face.
“You have seen the Mother, yes?”
He shivered under her blind gaze. More than anything Lionheart wanted to crawl back out of that chamber as fast as possible. “I . . . I still have no answer to my question.”
“I will give it,” said the oracle. “The Mother has declared this wisdom unto me. Listen closely, mortal man! What you desire may be found when you have received a certain ring out of Oriana Palace in Parumvir. You will know this ring by two things: its stones, fire opals, as hot inside as a dragon’s flame; and its giver, a princess who will fear you at first, but later will laugh.”
“A ring?” Lionheart frowned. “How . . . forgive me, Mother’s Mouth, but how will a ring help me kill a dragon?”
“Did you ask how to kill a dragon?”