Stormchild: Emeline and the Forest Mage

42 Journey to the Book

Erdil

    'This is my apprentice, Finlug.' The Mage patted Denirya's shoulder and cocked his eyebrow at her.

    Yes, she knew: remove the hood. She grumbled an illegible curse, but forced a smile as she threw the cowl off and exposed her skin.

    'Fifty years under my tutelage,' the Mage said, 'and she still wears that dark thing like it's her lover.'

    'Oh,' the brother said, 'yeh bringing her to read the book then.'

    'No,' he said and Denirya gritted her teeth. 'No, not this time. There's a—' he paused and tapped his chin. 'A fire she must yet temper, before I will allow it.'

    She clenched her fists. Did he just say allow? Subjugating herself to the Mage had been the hardest choice of her life, but it had saved her mother, and she paid the price to this day. Yet it was a price she thought worth paying; one day he would let her read the Book, and then vengeance would finally be hers. At the culmination of her lengthy apprenticeship, when she was deemed a Mage, she would end his life as her first act of power.

    As was her custom, she breathed in the forest, though it was far away, and connected with the life she felt there to separate herself from the anger, to bury it like a squirrel hiding nuts in the verdure she knew so well. Rustling leaves. The earthy smell after the rain. Creaking branches. Cawing birds. These things calmed her heart, and she could almost ignore the ever present fire in her bones, that compulsion to do everything Kijs said. Almost, but not quite.

    'Let's see the writing,' the Mage said with a click of his fingers. Again Denirya grit her teeth, but rolled open the scroll without hesitation. On it she had scribed the Guide's song, which was their map to the Book. Just thinking about it had her jowls salivating. To be so close to everything she'd ever wanted, to repay the man who had killed her father. And after all this time. She would read it, even if the Blood Moon fell on them all, she would read it.

    With a polite nod, Ol' Finlug took the scroll from her hands. Her writing was neat, and in the ancient script of the Magii, which only a select few could read. It surprised her to learn that Ol' Finlug was one of these few.

#

        Buried deep, buried far

        In the depths of the earth

        behind the Breath of the Fathers

        In the heart of darkness

        behind her hearth

        In the sun's eye

        on the stone's neck

        Where the ice giants break

        and Äbädä's legs quake

#

    'We don't have much time left,' the Mage said, and they looked back at Emeline, laid out on the counter the Innkeeper had polished till it shone.

    Her breaths were shallow, her skin paler than ever, the skin under her eyes sallow and dark. The wound on her side seemed to be healing, but then the sheen of sweat on her brow said otherwise. She had a fever, and that was never a good sign. The Mage had done what he could with The Way, but there was something wrong with her that went beyond the physical. What had the Dark Woman done to her? Who was the Dark Woman anyway; where had she come from, and how had she learned The Way, to do something to this child not even Kijs could reverse?