Stormchild: Emeline and the Forest Mage

44 The Golden Pages I

Erdil

Exhausted, Emeline collapsed into the arms of the woman who'd saved her. The smell of spices mixed with dust and old fabric clung to the woman, oddly it comforted her. The woman wrapped her arm around Emeline, her skin soft but cool, and Emeline's eyes drooped closed as her cheek pressed against the fabric of the woman's strange dress.

#

Milk-white: piercing, sharp, pure. The white bled away like liquid mist and Emeline blinked. Colourful smudges defined themselves past the milkiness, becoming first indistinct chairs, then glorious seats of royalty far beyond her stature. Gems glittering colours vaster than any she knew, brighter and deeper than any she'd ever seen. And that would be one, so she supposed her gem analysis was weak enough to assume these were real. Still, they breathed ethereal glory. Her eyes drank in the beauty, drowned in the gold glitter playing with the white that seemed to be more than white, alive somehow. Animate.

Behind her a presence grew. She felt it in the sudden tension knotting her shoulders, the premonition shivering her backbone, the tingling tracing her skin.

'Emeline Frost.'

A man's voice, a voice she knew and couldn't place. A man her instincts interpreted as lethal and loving—contrast her mind struggled to solve.

'Full,' she said, 'not Frost.' But her certainty had fled with the voice's echoes. The shiver on her skin warped to a seed of something festering in her belly. Good or bad, she couldn't be sure. It echoed blood, snow, a river, a terror, black smoke swirling in a stormy sky, screams, shouts. It echoed. Her hands began to tremble. The boniness of them seemed suddenly frail, brought from illness or terror, brought from a just punishment she would not acknowledge. Fighting the flood of horror threatening to lap over her carefully constructed walls, she strained to remember what was real, what she acknowledged as real.

Avétk, stringy oily hair, yellowed teeth, sorrow-filled inky eyes, that hollow smile that had warmed so on their journey. Her heart calmed, and her memory called up Ketiya, husky grating voice, her freedom, her dexterity in body and soul. And the Mage, that mystery inclined to mercy she didn't fully trust. What did he really want with her? And then came the prophecy and her soul's assertion that she was the Girl Child.

And, behind her at last she knew, stood the Fathers. The terror unfurled its wings and set her heart racing with something new. Awe.

The Fathers stood before her, and she was naked as she had been in the first dream, shapely curves and pallid milky skin. Her hips felt bare and she was keenly aware of the parts usually covered modestly. The Fathers didn't seem concerned. Their faces were familiar. A man with a giant dark beard and sorrow-filled eyes; another man with unremarkable features, a bald pate, a vine tattoo or marking snaking around one side of his face; and a third man with a chiselled jaw and a large, lively moustache dominating his face. Then it clicked; these were the faces on the statuette the Mage had given her in a dream. The amulet's power made more sense now. It was said even the Fathers' likeness wielded powers beyond the natural. That was why nobody painted them, or at least whoever did had no clue what they really looked like.

The robes they wore were a bright white.

'Welcome,' the Father with the moustache said, 'I am Mercur, Father of Time.'

'I' —Emeline glanced furtively about— 'I was reading The Book...'

'And now you are here,' the Father with the twining vine markings said, 'with us.' A great smile burst from him then, and he stepped forward, grabbed Emeline in an embrace. 'My little one,' he said, pulling back to see her face.