He schooled his features into impassivity as he handed the Warrior King the scroll, rolled in the hollow horn of a great wapiti, where it had been kept during the journey. A dying man and an elderly councilor against the wiles of an Earth Skyll who’d managed to keep his position for three hundred years. 

         Watch yourself, the Gibbor had warned him, you’re dealing with an ancient evil.

         He laughed then. Hadn’t he warded off demons in the sky?

         Which was why he could never understand why Elymas was allowed to kill the children. Why didn’t Jah intervene? He begged the Gibbor to allow him one shot at any distance he dictated to stop the slaughter, but the old man wouldn’t budge.

         The time isn’t yet. The bowl isn’t full, he told him. 

         However, as he stood at the oaken doors of the Great Throne Room, he found his answer. The bowl was Elymas, nearly full to the brim with rot and pride.

         Elymas sat on the stool built especially for his deformity, bright as a scarlet ibis, looking down his beak of a nose. He appeared unmoved by the appearance of the blue feather, his face impassive in light of the King’s joy. Oren wasn’t fooled. Underneath his silk robe, Elymas’s body trembled with rage. The material rippled, though he didn’t move.