by Allan Cole
The first snow flakes fell and I quickly shed my cloak and held it outstretched in the wind’s teeth until it was covered with fine white dust.
Then I turned my back on the sounds of fighting and hurried into the temple.
I found Emilie crouched by her little tree with the single silvery leaf. It was hanging by just a thread now, quivering in the increasing cold.
“It’s almost ready, Aunt Rali,” she said, voice trembling.
Her eyes were wide and I saw fear there. But I also saw Antero bravery warring with the fear. I sat beside her, pushed back the little blue hood and kissed her and stroked her curls to help win that war.
When she was calm, I said, “Make it snow please, Emilie dear.”
Emilie gave a little sigh and rose. She stood over the potted tree and wriggled her fingers like before. Once again snow drifted from her palm, touching the silvery leaf and transforming into glittering magical dust.
I caught the Emiliedust in a stone bowl, stirring it together with Novari’s snowflakes that I’d brushed off my cloak.
“That should be enough,” I finally said.
I set the bowl on the floor and beckoned for her to sit my lap. We cuddled for a time, each thinking her own thoughts.
Then the child said, “I hope Derlina will be all right.” Then quickly, as if they were present and she didn’t want to insult them, “And Palmeras and Quatervals too.” She waved a hand. “I hope they’ll all be all right.”
“They will, Emilie,” I said. “With your help.”
“I’m glad you don’t think I’m too little to help, Aunt Rali,” she said.
“Of course you aren’t,” I said. “I know you’re a big enough girl to do everything exactly right.”
She wriggled in my lap, delighted. She tried to make a fierce scowl. “I’ll show that... that... that... Novari. Just you wait and see!”
“I know you will, darling,” I said.
She was quiet for a time. Outside I could hear the lyre music growing louder. But beneath it I could hear the sounds of the raging battle.
Soon our forces would pretend to stumble and fall back in seeming disarray. Novari and Kato would be too eager to wait for the storm when they saw our weakness. They’d hit us with everything they had. The troops would panic. Quatervals and Derlina would struggle to keep order but in the end they’d all flee, Palmeras and his Evocators included.
Abandoning us here in the temple.
“Do you think I’ll be as good a soldier as you are when I get old, Aunt Rali?” Emilie asked.
I smiled. “Better,” I said.
“And as beautiful?”
I patted her, thinking, bless the child.
I answered, “Even more so.”
She turned to stare at the silver leaf, dangling from tree by its slender thread.
“It’s almost my birthday,” she announced. She pointed at the leaf. “Soon as that falls I’ll be seven winters old.”
She counted on her fingers, “One, two, three, four, five, six... and seven.” She held the fingers out. “And then I’ll be really strong!”
Emilie flexed a tiny arm, straining her face as she tried to make a muscle.
Then her shoulders slumped. Another sigh. “But not as strong as Novari.”
“She has more on her side,” I protested. “It isn’t a fair fight.”
“But I’ll keep getting stronger, won’t I Aunt Rali?”
“Every seven winters,” I said. “Remember how we figured it out. When we cast the Evocator’s bones.”
Emilie nodded. “Sure I do,” she said. “Every seven birthdays I’ll get to a new level. And each time I’ll get stronger and stronger. Until I’m so strong I could cut off her toes with lightning.”
She clapped her hands. “Emilie says, off with her toes! And her toes would be offed.”
Emilie giggled. “Then she’d fall over when she walked.”
We both laughed.
Then we heard a sound like chimes. And we turned to see the silver leaf break free and flutter to the stone.
I caught it with my golden hand and held it up before Emilie’s eyes.
“Congratulations, Emilie,” I said. “It’s official now. You’re seven winters old.”
Her eyes were full of innocent wonder. She reached out took the leaf between quaking fingers.
Soon as she touched it I felt a surge of sorcerous power blast out of the Otherworlds.
Emilie cried out: “It hurts, Aunt Rali! Make it stop!”
Her whole body trembled and I held her tight. Fire overflowed her veins and flooded mine. Power and pain were one, wracking us both. I tried to absorb as much as I could.
But it was Emilie’s power. And Emilie’s pain. And she had to suffer the most.
Then the agony ended and she went limp and sobbing in my arms.
“Is it over, Aunt Rali?” she wept. “Is it over yet?”
“Just about, dear,” I said.
I dried her eyes and turned her in my lap to face the bowl of Emiliedust floating in the melted snow from Novari’s storm.
I heard sounds of fighting from close by and then temple doors boomed shut and the bar was slammed into place.
“They’re comin’, Captain,” Weene called.
Emilie sniffled her last sniffle and stood straight and tall as she could.
“I’ll do it now,” she said.
She dipped the leaf into the bowl and stirred the Emiliedust, chanting:
“Little is little
And big is big.
Doesn’t matter,
Except to a pig.
Rain can shine.
But the sun can’t get wet.
Emilie’s here, so don’t you fret.”
The bowl of liquid and glittering Emiliedust turned molten, silvery, thick like mercury.
She dipped some out with the leaf and spattered it about, chanting:
“East is east,
And so is west.
World’s upside down.
‘Cause Emilie’s best.”
Then she drew herself up, spreading her little arms wide in unconscious parody of Palmeras and shouted:
“EMILIESAYS... STOP!”
Outside the wind ceased and the lyre music halted. I heard loud cries and the sounds of our soldiers’ panicked retreat.
Then there came a pounding at the temple doors.
And an imperious voice boomed:
“Open for Director Kato!”
Emilie calmly handed me the silver leaf, glowing with a hardened shellac of Emiliedust. I rolled it into a tube, slipped the metal splinter from my ship into the center and gave it back. With elaborate care, Emilie placed the tube in the inside pocket of her blue cloak.
Then I kissed her. We clung for a moment.
The voice came again: “Surrender the child at once!”
I stepped away from her. Torvol and Weene came running up to stand at her side.
“Goodbye, Aunt Rali,” Emilie said.
“Goodbye, Emilie,” I answered.
Then she clapped her hands.
The sound was like a great blast of thunder, then her child’s voice became that of a giant’s as she shouted:
“EMILIESAYS, GO!”
And Novari’s storm, pent up by Emilie’s will, slammed its icy fist down on Galana.
All sound collapsed in its roar. All sensation bowed low under its weight. I felt the sear of Novari’s magic wither the ethers around me.
Emilie and her guards became smoky, faint. She held out her hand to me. Her lips moved, but I heard nothing.
Then she waved.
I stabbed a finger at the smoky images and she and the women vanished.
Then from somewhere far off I heard Novari’s voice, calling, “Emilie... Emilie.
“Where are you Emilie?”
And from nearby I heard, “Here I am, Novari.”
Novari’s voice floated closer, buoyed up on waves of marvelous lyre music. “Emilie... Emilie...”
&
nbsp; And I heard a child’s voice plead, “I’m here, Novari. Please. I’m scared!”
Then the air stirred beside me. And I smelled a familiar perfume.
And Novari’s voice came just at my ear.
“There you are, child! Come with me.
“Novari will make you safe.”
Then the temple dissolved around me. And a great wind lifted me up and carried me away. I bobbed on fast currents, like an insect clinging to a stick. I collided with clouds, bouncing from bank to bank then was grabbed by the wind current again and hurled farther along Novari’s sorcerous river.
Suddenly the wind ceased and I was falling from a great distance, the ground slowly floating up at me.
Then I heard a hunting creature’s glad cry and the shadow of the Lyre Bird fell over me. She caught me in her claws, like a hawk swoops up a fish. Powerful wings stopped my swift descent. Then the wings flapped once, twice and all dissolved again.
And I found myself standing in Amalric’s garden.
The sun was bright, the flowers blooming and the fountain played sweet music on my mother’s shrine.
A beautiful woman stepped out from the shadows of the trees.
She wore a gown of virginal white with long floaty sleeves and a veil as delicate as mist drifting behind her in the breeze.
The woman came toward me, seeming very tall.
“Hello, Emilie dear,” Novari said in a voice as sweet as mountain springs.
“Hello,” I piped, holding out my hand, which was very small. As small as my child’s voice.
Then I let it quaver. “You won’t hurt me, will you?”
“Of course not, Emilie dear,” Novari said, taking my hand in hers. “I’d never dream of hurting a pretty little girl like you.”
“Really?” I said, tears welling up in my eyes. “You swear?”
“I don’t have to swear, dear,” the Lyre Bird said. “I’m Novari. The Lyre Bird.
“And the first thing you should know about me, is that... I can never tell a lie.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
EMILIE’S REVENGE
Novari peered down at me, a sweet smile playing across her perfect features.
On the outside I was Emilie, delicate as a meadow flower. I had Emilie’s innocent eyes. Her pearly milk teeth. Her child’s translucent skin. But inside I was Rali Antero. With a false hand a ruined eye and a cauterized soul.
But the Lyre Bird saw only Emilie when she said, “I’ve been waiting to meet you for such a long time, dear.”
She posed before me, white gown dazzling in the sun. She had a tiara of daisies woven through her golden hair and daisy bracelets encircled her slender wrists. Her sun-kissed skin was misted with the delicate aroma of lemony musk.
But I remembered the seductress and saw how the gown flowed about her lush figure, caressing every soft hill and hollow. I remembered her attempt at sorcerous seduction. Hot hands and lips bruising my body while I waited for my chance to kill her.
And here I was with Novari once again.
Waiting.
I looked about with childlike curiosity. Moments before I’d been in the center of a winter storm but here in the villa of my birth magic had banished all of winter’s cares.
The garden was springtime warm and the flowers were nodding under a happy sun. Insects clung to their blossoms sipping the nectar inside. Song birds flitted among the trees, hunting those living honeyed treats. While an old gray cat crouched under mint leaves waiting to pounce. It had one eye, I noted, like my Rali self.
Then Novari said, sharp: “Well, Emilie. What do you have to say for yourself?”
I ducked my head, pulling the blue hooded cloak closer as if I were suddenly cold.
“Was I very bad?” I asked.
Novari put a hand on a round hip and gave me a scolding look. “Well, you did interfere with my storm.”
“I put it back the way it was,” I piped in defense.
“But really, dear,” she said, “you spoiled the whole thing.”
She waved in the vague direction of Galana. “Because of you the storm ended too soon. It only lasted a few hours, instead of days. I wish you hadn’t interfered, Emilie. It was quite naughty of you.”
“People were getting deaded,” I said. “That’s why I inter- whatever you said I did.”
“I suppose that’s understandable,” Novari said, features softening. “You do have such a delicate nature. I have to make allowances for that. And those... people... were your friends, after all.”
“Are they all deaded, anyway?” I said, lower lip trembling.
“No, my sweet,” Novari said. “They aren’t all... deaded. Your friends are alive. But I can’t say much for their future. My troops are hunting them now.”
“Why don’t you just let them go?” I asked. “I’ll tell them not to be bad anymore.”
“Oh, I can’t do that, sweetness,” Novari said. “I’d like to please you. But I can’t. Even if I wanted to, I can’t. Especially now that they’ve gone and killed Kato, poor man.”
“Kato’s deaded?” I gawked. “How?”
Novari shrugged. “I think one of your friends cut his head off. With an ax. A big woman, I was told.”
I had to force myself not to smile. The big woman with an ax could only have been Derlina.
“I don’t really mind that much, sweetheart,” Novari said. “Kato was no friend of mine. He thought otherwise. But men think all kinds of things. And their notions of friendship with a woman begin and end with their loins.
“But Kato was useful, I’ll give him that. He was Director of Orissa, after all. Although there’s plenty of candidates to take his place, I can’t let poor Kato’s death go unpunished.”
Then she smiled, teasing. “But I’ll tell you what,” she said.
“What?”
“I promise you that when they catch your friends I won’t permit torture. It will a quick death. Painless as I can make it.”
She clapped her hands - delighted, as if she’d just offered me the greatest gift.
“See? Doesn’t that make you feel better already?
“Can we be friends now?”
I frowned, as if considering.
Then I smiled and said, “I’m hungry.”
Novari burst out laughing. “What a delightful child,” she said. “I just know that we’re going to get along very well indeed.”
Then she said, “Come, Emilie,” and held out her hand.
I stared at her, hesitating, as if weighing a difficult decision.
“I don’t bite little girls, Emilie,” she said.
I gave a nervous giggle. Then, acting reassured, I took her hand and skipped along the path beside her. She led me to the familiar garden bench where I’d last supped with Amalric and Omyere more than fifty years before.
There were little trays of delicacies waiting, sweets and tarts and finger cakes. There were sweating pitchers of cold milk and fruit juices. Fresh fruit and cheese and small covered pots of sherbets sitting on a bed of ice.
I scooted onto the bench near a sticky pile of sweets. I made certain I stayed in character, choosing a frosted date with the greatest of care. Then I nibbled on it delicately, brushing away any sugar crumbs from my cloak as fastidious as little Emilie ever was.
“This is good,” I said.
“Why don’t you take your cloak off, Emilie?” Novari suggested. “It must be awfully hot under there.”
My Rali self chortled - you have no idea, woman. But my Emilie self pulled the cloak closer. I patted it like it was an old friend, feeling the lump in the inside pocket. The pocket where the silver leaf and splinter were rolled up tight.
“That’s all right,” I said. “I get cold easy.” And then I said, dignified as I imagined a small child could be, “I do hope I am not being rude.”
Novari laughed. “Such a little princess,” she said. “So proper. So sensitive and sweet.
“I love you, Emilie. I really do.”