Stormchild: Emeline and the Forest Mage

45 The Golden Pages II

Watching felt like dragging a heavy lodestone across jagged terrain. Every part of her being shouted to escape, but Emeline bit down the terror. And opened her eyes.

The Dark Woman sliced people open one at a time, spilling their blood on the altar, and the dead joined a growing mass of animated corpses. A man dressed differently than the others stood between two trees behind the multitude. The Dark Woman pointed at him and the crowd parted as he approached her. He wore a burnous the likes of which Emeline's father sometimes made for foreign lords, and no ecstasy or bloodlust marred his face. The Dark Woman held her hand out to him, and he hesitated before taking it and stepping up the altar.

'You swore,' he said, but the Dark Woman cackled in his face and gestured to the crowd. Two light-haired young girls, perhaps twelve years of age, walked forward as if in a trance, and the man in the burnous lost all composure.

'No!' He tugged at the Dark Woman who shrugged him off. 'No, not my sisters. Please I take it back. Do what you will with the sands...' he fell to his knees. 'Please,' he begged, choking on dry sobs.

The Dark Woman grabbed him by the nape of his burnous. 'Did you think this was the end, Rishtai?' she whispered.

The man strained against her grip, but his eyes held a sorrow that tugged at Emeline's chest.

'Please,' he begged. 'Kill me instead.'

'Why is she doing this?' Emeline asked.

The Father took his time answering, but at last said, 'She believed she could become a creature above the Fathers, but a created thing can never surpass the one who made it.' A smile crow-footed his eyes. 'Imagine a basket turning on the woman who weaved it.'

A picture of a talking basket lashing out at a comely old woman pulled a nervous laugh from Emeline.

He nodded. 'This is just as ridiculous.'

Time sped around them, and when it slowed Emeline saw four figures emerging from the leafless forest around the multitude, likely mere minutes later. Each held a staff shining a different colour, and their eyes glowed, immediately calling to mind the Mage. 'Mages?' she asked.

'Yes, Emeline, this is where the beginning of the end of an age started. Once, the Magii served the Immortals who ruled the earth fairly. But with the Magii rising to power, the Immortals lost their hold on humanity and the third age, the age of lords, began. Since then the Magii dwindled to a scant few-these few-excluding one. The only still living.'

This fit closely with what Emeline knew about history, though the history she had heard focused on the grand deeds of men and kings. Ashttïg Ewïg, the first of the Lords. Misä Ewigstêr, daughter of Feilïn, the first woman chosen to rule. The evil Günsel Stêr who Lord Pittü Sigt defeated in the blood river battle less than a hundred years ago. But which Immortals had ruled before then, which Mage had betrayed them? Which men had faced down the eternal beings for control of Erdil?

'How did the Magii defeat the Immortals?' she asked the Father.

'Well,' he glanced at the Magii sneaking closer to the Dark Woman's altar, still undetected. 'They did not defeat them in truth. The immortals, tangled in their own intrigues, showed themselves to be poor stewards of a planet we created with great care, and the Fathers agreed to strip them of their authority over man. As you might know, they still have abilities far beyond humans', but they are bound now to our will. They are not free. They cannot do what they will.' A glassy look came into the Father's eyes. 'Not anymore, not truly.'

A woman with eyes glowing a pale blue lifted her staff and screamed, standing amidst the multitude of dead corpses. As one the corpses' heads twisted to her, expressionless, controlled by the Dark Woman's sand magic.